Design Strategies
• Figurative Language: 4 tropes or classes
– Irony: incongruity between words & meaning
– Metaphor: comparison implying likeness
between two disparate concepts
– Synecdoche: substitution of part for whole
or the whole for the part
– Metonymy: symbolic substitution of attribute
or symbol for a concrete “thing”
Design Strategies
• Literal Language: “It’s raining hard”
• Figurative Language: 4 tropes or classes
– Irony: “Lovely weather we’re having”
– Metaphor: “It’s raining cats and dogs”
– Synecdoche: “The drops are really coming
.down”
– Metonymy: “It’s umbrella weather”
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Personality Type & Trope Style
1. Identify your
primary trope
style
2. Identify your
secondary
trope styles
3. Identify your
least likely
trope style
Design Strategies: Group Exercises
• Define a universal theme & brief details
– First Love / Eternal Love / Love Lost
– Unattainable Love
– Infidelity
– Social Class, Headline, Famous Person or
Event, etc.
• Find a Cliché as a workable theme.
– Grass is greener on the other side
– Can’t judge a book by its cover
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Design Strategies: Metaphor
• Verbal equation comparing two unusual
concepts with distant link
• Right brain holistic mode to compare
similarities and synthesize new comparison
• Examples of metaphors in songs?
• Specific types of metaphors:
– Simile: tentative or weaker metaphor using
like, as, or than
– Personification - examples
Design Strategies: Metaphor
• Exercise:
– Use ROADTRIP as a metaphor to design a
lyric layout for your universal theme
– Complete the metaphor
– Realistic comparisons
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Design Strategies: Synecdoche
• Substitutes the part for the whole (more
common) or the whole for the part
• Left brain mode (analytical) identify key
components and parts of the whole
• The substitution must embody the whole
• Examples:
– Sailing – The canvas can do miracles
– A bottle full of bubbles = ?
Design Strategies: Metonymy
• External attribute or symbol for a concrete
object
• Can be confused with synecdoche - more
abstract, not directly connected
• Combination of left & right brain modes
• Possession for possessor
• Place for place’s identity
• Container for the contained
• Creator for the creation
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Design Strategies: Metonymy
• Enactment – cause for effect
• Exercise:
– Identify an effect of your universal theme
and then visualize the specifics to come up
with metonymy
Design Strategies: Irony
• Paradox – overstatement - understatement
• Pun – word play – words pronounced the
same with different meanings
• Examples:
– Train – teach, vehicle, line, link of ideas
– Blue, blew
• Double entendre – double meaning,
symbolism – often used in sex plots / themes
• Pitfall – have to hear the pun and connection
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Design Strategies Add Depth
• Majority of song lyrics are either:
• Plot / story-line driven lyrics OR emotion driven lyrics
• Go to the library and search the periodicals and go
online and look at headlines and create examples of
each of the 4 design strategies
• For this afternoon (2 PM): bring back headlines and /
or article descriptions used to create your examples
• Framing Strategies & Plot Categories are the nuts &
bolts assembly of the lyric composition
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