Analyzing Websites

4Semiotics of Digital Design: From Ethos to Ethics

Nicole PIGNIER

EHIC, Université de Limoges, France

4.1. Introduction

The 21st century began with the emergence of webdesign¹, the field of design that at the time was dedicated to the creation of Web interfaces offering new information and communication experiences. At the very beginning of the 2000s, every organization – institutions, companies, and associations – was eager to create its own website, using the skills of Web designers to create it. The outpouring of creativity was in full swing: designers explored all the possibilities of Web interface design and “content” design. This desire to interact with multimodal information, combining enunciative forms such as images, sounds, linguistic texts, and movement within the “screen page”, was symbolized by the success of the Macromedia Flash software which, over the period of a decade starting in 1996, made it possible to design animations and bring together artistic creation and communicational originality. In Web agencies, a considerable amount of time was spent on creative research and development. While this period also suffered from unreliable digital security and laborious updates requiring manual changes to the code, it was marked by curiosity, the opening of possibilities, and the creative impulse both artistic and artisanal, to produce something “handmade”.

With this in mind, our goal is to question the “meaning-making” of webdesign: to what extent and in what ways ...