| Semiotics is a theory about the signs’natures and laws. Signs are perceptions carrying significance, while meanings must be express by signs, and the purpose of signs is expressing meanings. In the last one hundred years, semiotics got rapid development, also became a distinguished school in China. Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who is hailed as the father of modern linguistics, had laid the semiotics’ foundations in Europe. He held that the sign is the combination of signifier and the signified. American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, another forerunner of semiotics, focused on the logic meaning of signs, and proposed that the sign consists of representatum, object and interpretant. French literary theorist and critic Roland Barthes described the second-order signs system:a signifier relating to a signified makes a new signifier, and relating to a new signified further.Since the1980s, semiotics has developed many branches, including the semiotics of design. In cultural life and communication, the elements of design have the characteristics of sign, which makes it possible to analyze the laws of design signs’emergence and evolvement by the methods of modern semiotics and linguistics. Studying the cover design and best-sellers from a semiotic view, has got some achievements, although little, but refreshing, and this dissertation is also a try in this field.Best-seller is a kind of books which has huge demand in quantity and a high or low level in quality in the market within a limited time frame, and as a result, it gains extensive concern form the readers, leading the fashion of reading to a certain extent, causing a strong influence in society. Inspirational best-sellers are the books which aim to inspire readers to pursue success, accumulate wealth and build a balance of physical and mental. In summary, the connotations of inspirational best-sellers are reflected in two aspects:a positive attitude and a good mentality. For young people, seeking balance of physical and mental is a life topic, which they have to face. According to the characteristics of its content, inspirational best-sellers can be divided into two kinds:one is inspirations of successful school, and another is inspirations of soul self-help. The former concentrate on success in career, wealth and education, while the latter concentrate on individual psychology growth, such as personal cultivation, interpersonal relation, philosophy for life and so on. The publication of inspirational books in China began in the mid1980s, and its history can be divided into three periods:foreign classic spread period, embryonic stage of native inspirational books and mature period.The cover design of a book, especially with a best-selling style, is a important cause of best-selling, although book’s best-selling is closely related to the social transition and individual pursuit. In all parts of the book, the cover can be said to be the book’s face. When readers buy a book at random, and most of the new books are not so famous, the book has to attract readers’attention by its cover. Text, image and color are the three main visual elements of a book cover design. The permutation and combination of those three elements can develop all kinds of cover design. A good cover design, have to convey the book’s essential information and make it understood quickly, as well as lead us to enjoy its beauty——so as to play a role of promotion. After all, when people feel he loves something too much to part with it, then he will have the desire to buy it. As the most inflammatory books——inspirational best-sellers, its cover design have many requests. The cover design of inspirational best-sellers pursue a better communication effect——supposing that the cover of a book can’t impress readers, how can we except this book to encourage them? "Cover" has the branch of broad sense and narrow sense. Broad sense of "cover" includes front cover, inside front cover, inside back cover, back cover and spine. Narrow sense of "cover" just refers to the front cover. In this paper, the "cover" mainly refers to the front cover, but particular part of the back cover (such as price) is also involved. The languages in cover usually contain title (including subtitle), author name (and translator name), publisher name, etc. In the perspective of semiotics, the researches of cover languages mainly have two aspects:one is the semantics of the language, involving signifier, signified, extension and connotation; another is the pragmatics of the language, analyzing the visual presentation of text, which is shown by the font, size and boldness.The titles of inspirational best-sellers usually around the theme of "ego","child","life" and "world", which is closely related to himself, reflect that the demand of the readers is secular, but also is positive. Nouns have its advantages in signifying theme. Monotonous verbs and adjectives embodies some problems which is blamed for a long time——utilitarianism. Among the authors of those inspirational beat-sellers, foreign authors is stronger than local authors, and the author’s name who had have more than two works published become the sign of best-selling. For many readers and in the publishing circles, press stands for quality. At present, several presses in China have established a good reputation in the process of publishing inspirational best-sellers, and as a result, its own name becomes the sign of best-selling as well. Compared to other kinds of books, inspirational book has higher price elasticity. That means, readers are more sensitive to the price changes of inspirational books. As a result, the prices of inspirational best-sellers are medium low, primarily ranging from15to20Yuan. The mantissas, critical points and taboo numbers of prices show some regularity. The covers of the inspirational best-sellers often emerges a lot of "supplementary texts", such as some declarations, media names, celebrity recommended languages and even advertising languages. All those supplementary texts are the elements that designers try to amplify. The font, size, boldness of texts carry lots of symbolic meanings, and become an important method to display the theme.Picture is a kind of signs of epic meaning and international language role. Metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche are the main rhetoric methods in semiotics. Metaphor bases on similarity. In order to stimulate readers’ pursuit for success, wealth, physical and mental balance, and arouse their consumption desire, the pictures in inspirational best-sellers’cover make the theme understood by building clear metaphor. Metonymy bases on proximity. Synecdoche depends on the relation between the whole and the part, and its noumenon and metaphor are in a subordinate relationship. Illustration and photography have been the most generally used on inspirational best-sellers’covers, as they can express the theme directly, which is easily understood. Apart from that, celebrity’s images can be often found on the cover, in order to take advantage of their influence.Color’s impact on the cover is overall. It makes the book has strong visual identification features, affecting the expressional effect of pictures and words, which affect the tone of the cover finally. Under complicated circumstances, the visual psychology of association, symbol and emotion each color generated is associated with people’s experience, and then objective color has complex character. Color changes in temperature affect human’s physiological feelings, and the choice of cover color shows regularity, for example, warm colors are used for expressing the themes about positive attitudes, woman and child; red, which is also a warm color, is used for stimulating actions in career or a positive even radical view; inspirational best-sellers of soul self-help prefer to warm colors of red, yellow and orange; cold colors are used for building a tone of rationality and maturity, and expressing the themes about man.; black can express a solemn feeling, while white is a supplementary of indifferent feeling; gray for background can generate a tone full of artistic conception. Besides, complementary colors and contrast colors also require careful treatment.This dissertation studies143inspirational best-sellers in mainland China from1986to2011, mainly involves the content of semiotics, inspirational best-sellers and cover design. The selected title, contents and methods of this paper are new. In theory, this study is helpful for us to summarize the experience and lessons of the social mass culture development in the period, to open the vision of the research of best-sellers and cover design, and to rich the methods of research, strengthen the combination of editing and publishing science and semiotics. In practice, it is useful for the editorial staff to enhance their understanding of book cover design, getting them more involved in book design and cover design in the process of editing and publishing, providing new ideas and methods to art designers, hoping enlightening editorial staff on how to create best-sellers. |
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