Serbia en imágenes: mensajes visuales de un país

Abstract

The ubiquity of the image in everyday life leads us to witness a mighty revival
of the culture of the image. The image of different countries -through potential culture
of their territories and reputations of their respective nations- ranks as one of the main
presentation cards in the international arena. This article focuses on “product design”, in
relation to the Serbian national image. We have based our research on two cases of graphic
design that took place in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. The first is the winning image of
the card design contest VISA in 2005, and the second is a giant poster of 2010 located at
the Nikola Tesla International Airport. The two designs are developed to enhance international competitiveness and both represented the national Serbian heritage. But, however,
the objectives to achieve were not the same. One has been produced for an international
private company and the other was drawn by an official institution.
Given these different objectives that achieves the image, we propose to conduct a semiotic
analysis of the two advertising cases. We will try to figure out what the designed images are
telling us. From this point on we can perhaps understand the meanings of the messages
that show and hide and what are the suggested actions.