Information Design Journal - Volume 4, Issue 3, 1984

This paper presents a general and non-technical overview of semiotics and its recent history. The importance of Peirce and Saussure as founding fathers of contemporary semiotics is discussed and the debate they precipitated is mapped out including some of the peculiar characteristics of semiotics as a field of study. Some advice is given on how to read semiotic research, emphasising its contribution as an art rather than as a science. Some emphasis is placed on the specific contribution of semiotics to our understanding of the political nature of all communication.

Theories of design may inform practice or aid understanding, though this is not an absolute distinction. Semiotics promises benefits to design theory in recognizing the semantic dimension (ignored by information theory), but in extrapolating from an α-historical linguistics it has no means of dealing with the material activity of designing; either as aid to practice or to understanding. The proposal of a visual/verbal rhetoric promises to link theory and practice, and to recognize designing as a social activity. But designing will remain obstinately out of reach of any formal theory.

This article arises from the author's teaching notes concerning the role of images in communication and the use of information structures in transmitting messages. For those students who are potential design practitioners rather than theorists, widespread contradiction and ambiguity in the relevant literature presents many obstacles to understanding. A wide diversity of terms and definitions highlights the need for more radical analysis so that the realities represented can be effectively disclosed. To evaluate image theories and systems and the crucial issues which are raised a coherent method and framework is necessary.

Increasingly available electronic information systems raise questions about the comparability of print presented on a page and on a screen. Research is needed on how users learn to cope with three aspects of such systems. Studies in typography could profitably focus on the appropriate density for electronic text, and on the perceptions of younger users. Research on interactive graphics might examine how users learn to manipulate images along with text. And there needs to be further investigation of how people 'navigate' in electronic information; the success of various kinds of cues and help systems are worthy subjects for study. Understanding the use of electronic text needs closer ties between human f actors and learning research.

Nine different formats of a street map were designed to test effects of contrast between city blocks, streets and street names. The position of the streets and their names remained constant. The contrast between city blocks, streets and names was varied by using combinations of black, white and grey in the designs. Four different map reading tasks were used to test each of the nine formats: 288 undergraduate students were tested on the 36 combinations of format and task. Λ two-way analysis of variance was conducted. The means were analysed using Tukey's HSD test. Both factors were found to be significant at the 0.01 level, indicating that variations in the formats significantly influenced performance on the various map-reading tasks.