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Design 4: Visual Organization and Information Design

Week 2: Signs and Symbols

• Topics: Graphic Communication and Semantics, Logograms, Phonograms, Pictographs, Diagrams, Signs with multiple meanings, Political symbols.
• Agenda
• Review Action Verb projects
• Discussion
• In class work on class excercises and begin assignment

Class Notes

In the modern era, design has been a powerful tool in the hands of political and cultural leaders searching for ways to articulate new political creeds and promote new patterns of behavior.

Signs and symbols predate modern alphabet based languages for communication, and many early civilizations had sophisticated symbolic language systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan glyphs.

Typically, signs and symbols refined into icons and logos are used to represent a key concept or idea in a compact form. They may take their form from a stylized drawing of this concept or they may be more abstract, using the graphic language of line, form and scale to create a shape that feels right for the concept.

Signs and symbols simplified into a logo or icon, when done well, have the capacity to represent a large body of information in a simple form making them powerful communication tools.

Visual Communication may be seen as an attempt to inform or persuade, aimed primarily at the eye of the receiver. Graphic communication is one kind of visual communication which can be classified in terms of the following techniques:

1. Photographics = Photography: the use of light sensitive surfaces, optical systems, and reflected light.
2. Hand-graphics = Painting, drawing, drafting, etc.
3. Typographics = Printing, typography.

Graphic Communication and Semantics

We turn from psychology to philosophy, which has contributed to graphic communications through its branch of semantics or semiotics, and particularly through analysis of the terminology applied to communication. Thus, for example, the philosopher C. W. Morris, in his Signs, Language and Behaviour (1946), has attempted to construct a vocabulary of meaning and communication. Such a common vocabulary is necessary in order for the various disciplines to discourse intelligently about graphic communication. Primary is the distinction Morris makes between signs and symbols.

Signs in graphic communication

When a street curve is depicted graphically on a traffic sign, the motorist's driving behavior is affected before they have actually reached the street curve: they slow down and get ready to negotiate the curve efficiently.

This example illuminates Morris's definition of a sign as a stimulus that stands for another stimulus not present at the moment. In this case the sign-stimulus (the highway sign) stands for the absent stimulus of the actual highway curve; the sign-stimulus affects the behavior (slowing down) of its interpreter (motorist) by virtue of its relation to the absent stimulus (anticipation of the danger related to highway curves).

How and to what extent a graphic sign affects the behavior of its perceiver has been subject of much controversy. Obviously the perceiver of a graphic representation of fire does not respond to the graphic sign as he would respond to the fire itself -i.e., by running away or attempting to douse the flame. But some component of his reaction to the sign may be similar to his reaction to the real thing. The difficulty in psychology so far has been to account in a single theory for the whole spectrum of reactions to graphic signs.

Consider the following four signs: the letter "e," the silhouette of a human, a dollar sign and a bar chart.

Logogram Roman "e," Caslon Old Styie	Pictograph Guard sign system for Tokyo Olympics	Ideogram Dollar sign, arbitrary symbol	Diagram Bar chart used to communicate data comparisions or explanation

They are obviously different and we must be able to label them differently if we want to distinguish them. When we write an "e" or any other letter, we produce a particular kind of graphic sign called a "phonogram" which takes the dimension of speech-sound into account. On the other hand, the silhouette of the man and the dollar sign do not stand for speech sounds; they form a class of their own, called "phonograms." Since phonograms are independent of speech sounds, they have the important property of communicating across language barriers. There are, however, obvious differences between the silhouette of the man and the dollar sign. The silhouette of the man refers to the "real object" by resemblance and is called a "pictograph" while the dollar sign, also independent of speech-sound, but not iconic, belongs in the class of diagrams. (See chart of graphic signs below)

Symbols in graphic communication

There is a further crucial distinction between graphic signs. When a political cartoonist portrays the Republican party as an elephant, or the British Empire as a lion, he makes use of pictographs. But there is a difference here between the pictograph of a silhouette of a man and the pictographs of the elephant as used in our example. The pictograph of the elephant stands for an animal which in turn stands for a political party. (Similarly, the lion stands for an animal which stands for the British Empire.) Furthermore it can be classified more exactly as an "indirect symbol" -a sign that is substituted for an object (elephant) which in turn stands "indirectly" for another object (Republican party). There are also direct symbols: When we use the pictograph of a snail to symbolize "slowness," we refer directly to a property of the snail, and not indirectly to another object. Such as graphic sign is a "direct symbol."

Learn more in this week's reading of Signs and Symbols in Graphic Communication, by Martin Krampen

Examples of signs and symbols with multiple meanings

The meaning of a symbol is learned and the context can change that meaning. For example the human hand and fist have been used as powerful symbols throughout history. Examples of the fist used as political graphic symbols can be traced to a multitude of contradictory ideological protest movements. One of the most famous movements associated with this symbol is the Black Power Movement of the late 1960's. Below are just a few examples of fist images which have been used in numerous political graphic genres, including the 1968 student protests in the United States and France, the French and Soviet revolutions, the United States Communist Party, Aryan Pride, the Black Panther Party, Feminist protest, anti-war protests, pro-worker and union politics, Gay activism and have even been co-opted by commercial interests to sell everything from tshirts, and hair picks to Howard Stern's talk radio show.

Howard Stern's radio talk show logo

Animal symbols in U.S. politics

Animals have long been powerful symbols assocaited with political movements, national and ethnic identities, as well as organizations and corporations. In the United States we have multiple animal power symbols including the Bald Eagle, the wild turkey, the Water Buffalo, etc. Below are a few examples of some of these animal symbols and their use in political and issue centered communication.

This image was a plea for unity in defending the colonies during the French and Indian War. It played off a common superstition of the time: a snake that had been cut into pieces could come back to life if you joined the sections together before sunset.

"Third Term Panic" by Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, 1874.

The now-famous Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson's 1828 presidential campaign. His opponents called him a jackass and Jackson decided to use the image of the strong-willed animal on his campaign posters. Later, cartoonist Thomas Nast used the Democratic donkey in newspaper cartoons and made the symbol famous.

Nast invented another famous symbol—the Republican elephant. In a cartoon that appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1874, Nast drew a donkey clothed in lion's skin, scaring away all the animals at the zoo. One of those animals, the elephant, was labeled “The Republican Vote.” That's all it took for the elephant to become associated with the Republican Party.
From More Party Animals

This poster was designed as a protest against the limited choices imposed by the two-party political system in the United States of America.

In Class Activity

Creating graphic signs: logogram, pictogram and diagram

Take your verb project and refine aspects of this design to create three new and different symbols which are representative of your issue.

You will end up with three different symbols. Each one will be designed using one of the three graphic sign classifications. Logogram, Pictograph and Diagram (See Graphic Sign chart above)

Considerations

• Colors black, white and one other color
• Do some quick initial sketches of your three different graphic signs in class
• Scan the images into the computer.
• Clean up the images as you see fit in PhotoShop
• Place the refined images in Illustrator. You can trace the images and add to them with the various drawing tools.
• Save all your electronic source files for the class activity into a folder and place them in the class drop box on the network before you leave today.

Example: From verb project to graphic signs

If your issue was fashion you could have taken any aspects of the visual verb project and expanded upon them by creating a dynamic logogram symbol, and an illustrative pictograph as well as an abstract diagram all starting from the visual language of your verb project, and extending your visual language into these three different signs.

Logogram. This example from French Vogue plays with overlapping type and closue to create a new logogram as a typographical heading.

Pictograph. The pictographic collection Diva Doodles plays with loose black lines to render iconic pictographs of things associated with women's fasion, pampering and apparal.

Ideogram. This abstract series of lines might build upon one aspect of your verb project such as a swirling line.

Diagram. This seeming abstraction of lines and shapes works as a diagram of clothing patterns related to fashion.

Example: One Laptop Per Child

Below is an excellent example of how all three of these graphic signs we've been discussing can come together into a clear and systematic graphical language.

Pentagram designed the identity and website for One Laptop per Child, the non-profit organization with the goal of providing laptop computers to all children in developing nations.

Notice how the first sign is a logogram (1), the second a pictograph (laptop) the third a Diagram (arrow) and the fourth is a pictograph (child). The clean language of signs offers multiple possibilities for the designer to connect with a global audience.

Learn more laptop.org

Assignment

You are an animal

1. Select an animal (real or mythological) that you find interesting, and representative of the ethos of your issue.
   Research your animal and choose five descriptive words that describe and relate to the animal, ranging from the obvious to the oblique. Consider mythology, legend, folklore, and fables, as wellas contemporary issues like ecology, conservation, and scientific research.
2. Write each word at the top of three 8 1/2 x 11" pages of white paper. In total you should have fifteen pages for all five words..
   Divide each page into four sections with a one-point rule line. To accomodate four symbol explorations per page.
3. Create unique symbols that represent the words and put them in the middle of the empty spaces on each page. (approximately two inches in diameter) You will have twelve symbols on three pages for each word. In total you should have sixty symbols.

Considerations

• No photos or collages. All work must be original
• Colors: black ink on white paper
• No computer
• Your symbols may be Pictographs and/or Diagrams but NOT Logograms. i.e. no letterforms or type. (not yet)

Example: Six pictographs and diagrams

Research:

Reading

Please read the following article in preparation for next week's class.
Note readings on JSTOR may be accessed by signing in with your New School username and password.

• Signs and Symbols in Graphic Communication, by Martin Krampen, Design Quarterly, No. 62, Signs and Symbols in Graphic Communication. (1965), pp. 1-31.

Optional but interesting

• Speaking of the Heart: Some Annotations, by Hanno Ehses, Design Issues, Vol. 18, No. 1. (Winter, 2002), pp. 62-67.

Related links

• How did Republicans pick the elephant, and Democrats the donkey, to represent their parties?
• morepartyanimals.com
• Not your grandparent's clenched fist, by Phil Patton, 10 January 2006, AIGA
• Political Logos on Wikipedia
• Tokyo Pictograms PingMag
• The story of how Pentagram designed the Citi logo