Design – Sending Silent Signals

As The Space Doctors has discussed oodles of times, human beings continually “read” the world around themselves, trying to determine what it has to “say.”

All of which sounds like a lot of mumbo-jumbo, hardly worth the number of pixels required to communicate it.

But it’s not.

The film industry knows how much skill we have deciphering the signals being sent by design—that’s why they have whole sets of people to create sets used—and why they pay those people so well.

And you yourself have actively read environments in which you’ve found yourself, even if you haven’t thought about situations in those terms.  For example, have you ever interviewed for a job and not felt good about joining a firm because of how you felt in their offices?

Listing what anything that we might find around us, in real life, means would require an immense dictionary.  But you already hold that dictionary of things in your head just as you possess the dictionary of words that you use to understand what people are saying around you and what you read.

You also possess, in your mind, probably, dictionaries that you use to understand words in different languages—and the meanings attached to something, whether it’s a coffee table or a colour or a scent—can vary from one culture to another.

When you enter a space or are putting one together, think like a set designer:  What is this place saying to me?  What is sending the wrong messages, in other words, what do I need to change? What do I want this area to say to others?  Doing so will make you much more comfortable in our often too complex world(s).