Note: The following article is in an exploratory state, it is part of my research to understand the Reality, Symbols, and Society. I do not own the ideas, they belong to the research of Jean Baudrillard.

Very few people explore the depths of the field they work in. Understanding Visual Communication/Graphic Design is entirely dependent on the eye of the observer. Thus it is highly important to understand reality, symbols, and society in order to make impactful designs.

My article will discuss the contribution of Jean Baudrillard, a post-modern/structuralist philosopher. He is best known for his analysis of technological communication. He wrote mostly how technological progress affects social change, and how societies are always on the search for a sense of meaning or a ‘total’ understanding of the world.

Baudrillard wrote about Simulacra and Simulation, and is well known for his writing and discussion of symbols, signs, and how they relate to contemporaneity (simultaneous existences).

He claimed that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is a simulation of reality. Yet, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that anything like reality is relevant to our current understanding of our lives.

The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence is and are rendered legible; Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Baudrillard called this phenomenon the “precession of simulacra”