Semiotics
Studies signs and how they produce meaning: how an image, a word, or an object comes to mean something to someone.
What it studies
How meaning is created. It gives design tools to analyze what an image, a brand, or an object communicates.
Principles
Signifier and signified
The form of the sign and the idea it evokes.
Denotation and connotation
What is seen and what it suggests.
It depends on who is looking
Meaning changes with culture and context.
Applications in design
Use it like this
Ask what your design suggests, in addition to what it shows.
Avoid
Assuming a symbol means the same thing in every culture.
Don’t fall for it
Test icons and images with the real audience: you already know what you meant to say.
Connections
Authors and works
- 1916
Ferdinand de Saussure
Described the sign as the union of a signifier and a signified.
- 1964
Roland Barthes
Analyzed an advertisement to show how an image suggests more than it shows.
- 2006
Klaus Krippendorff
Proposed designing from what objects mean to people.
Sources
Original sources
- Saussure, F. de (1916). Cours de linguistique générale (C. Bally & A. Sechehaye, Eds.). Payot.
- Peirce, C. S. (1931–1958). Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, & A. W. Burks, Eds.; Vols. 1–8). Harvard University Press.
- Barthes, R. (1964). Rhétorique de l’image. Communications, 4, 40–51. View source: Barthes, R. (1964)
- Krippendorff, K. (2006). The semantic turn: A new foundation for design. CRC Press.
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