Graphics 2 introduction to semiotics international safety signs

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Graphics 2introduction to semiotics
international safety signs
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introduction

• Signage systems
• lots of signs around us, some standard, some not
  so much
• Quiz - identify the subject of the sign and how
  it is telling you to behave
• 25 signs from DIN standard used by UK Health and
  Safety
• Review of quiz
• scores - what do they tell us?
• Discussion - what makes a good sign system?
• Semiotics - the language of signifiers and
  signified

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familiar example - packing signs
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Hans-Rudolf Lutz Die Hieroglyphen von Heute
(1990) (Hieroglyphs of Today) -
http//www.lutz.to/hieroglyphen1.html compendium
of 5,000 international signs and symbols found on
cardboard boxes demonstration of a working
system of signs that has developed without the
formal intervention of graphic designers or
information graphics
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familiar example - laundry symbols

• Groupement International d'Etiquetage pour
  l'Entretien des Textiles (International
  Association for Textile Care Labelling)
• claim to cover 95 of all manufactured textiles
• GINETEX care symbols are registered with the WIPO
  (World Intellectual Property Organization)

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international safety signs

• Three main standards in common usage
• some signs used by all, others are peculiar to
  one system
• ISO 3864 International Standards Organisation
• includes most of the DIN 4844-2 and adds many
  more
• ANSI Z.535 American National Standards Institute
• requires text to be used along with pictograms
• DIN 4844-2 Deutsches Institut für Normung
  (German Institute of Standardisation)
• most familiar to people in the UK and Europe,
  generally recognised worldwide

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a short quiz about hazard signs

• DIN 4844-2 warning signs quiz

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three types of safety sign
Hazard warning Corrosive materials
Mandatory Wear protective clothing
Prohibited Do not touch
Subtle difference between the signs - most people
get it, but find it hard to put into words and
describe the precise meaning of the sign
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three types of safety sign
Hazard warning General
Mandatory General
Prohibited General
Cultural knowledge necessary to deduce the
meanings of the signs when pictograms are not
present
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some interesting cases toxic sign

• Skull and crossbones - use as a symbol stretches
  back thousands of years
• Known to have been used in New York State since
  around 1850 to denote poison
• HAZMAT EU standard toxic symbol Directive
  67/548/EEC
• ISO, ANSI, DIN and most other standards use the
  same symbol
• Very powerful cultural symbol
• does not provide pictorial representation of
  hazard (such as falling figure)
• could be argued to represent consequences of
  hazard (but what about any other hazard?)

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some interesting cases biohazard sign

• Charles Baldwin, Dow Chemical, 1966
• Wanted a sign with no meaning!
• We wanted something that was memorable but
  meaningless, so we could educate people as to
  what it means. New York Times, 2001
• Designed by marketing department, tested for
  recognition
• Ease of reproduction - stencilling
• Also needed to work regardless of orientation
• Can be reproduced precisely with compass and
  ruler - field work

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some interesting cases radioactive sign

• Originally sketched out by a group of people at
  the University of California, Berkeley in 1946
• 1948 letter by Nels Garden described why they
  chose it
• represented activity radiating from an atom
• magenta symbol on a blue background
• cheap to print
• did not conflict with any other colour code
• blue not common in radiation labs
• later yellow background added to make it clear it
  was a warning
• ANSI standardised modern symbol late 1950s

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electromagnetic
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some interesting cases radioactive sign

• Requirement to represent other types of
  radiation
• Non-ionising radiation
• Laser radiation
• Optical radiation
• Dilution of the message
• familiarity breeds contempt
• which hazards are the most hazardous?
• how to represent hierarchy?

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some interesting cases radioactive sign

• Feb 2007 new sign standardised by International
  Atomic Energy Agency, and contained in ISO
  214822007
• Purpose is to make it clear to everyone that
  there is danger present that will lead to harm
  and that they should leave
• Result of a five year project
• Tested by Gallup Institute on a total of 1,650
  individuals in Brazil, Mexico, Morocco, Kenya,
  Saudi Arabia, China, India, Thailand, Poland,
  Ukraine and the United States

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some interesting cases radioactive sign

• Compound nature of the sign
• how many pictograms are present?
• is there a narrative?
• Cultural components of the sign
• on what does an understanding of its meaning
  depend?
• to whom might it be meaningless?

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semiotics

• Semiotics - the study of signs
• very broad area - means slightly different things
  to different people depending on their field
• A sign can be anything at all that has meaning
• a road sign, a street name, a map, an atlas
• a letter, a word, a sentence, a book
• a song, a film, a hand gesture, a pose, an idea
• Three main areas to the study of semiotics
• the signs themselves
• the way signs are organised into systems
• the context in which signs appear
• Basic principle is that of signifier and
  signified
• there cannot be a signifier if nothing is
  signified
• in order for something to be signified, there
  must be a signifier

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introduction to semiotics

• Not a well defined discipline, despite being
  established for over 100 years
• origins in the work of Ferdinand de Saussure -
  Swiss linguist 1857 - 1913 - Semiology
• and Charles Sanders Peirce, American philosopher
  and scientist 1839 - 1914 - Semiotics
• Saussures ideas formed part of a linguistics
  course at the University of Geneva 1906 - 1911
• his theories form the basis of modern day
  semiotics
• he died before publishing them but
• his students assembled them from lecture notes
  and published them in 1916 as the Course in
  General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique
  générale)
• Peirce published on philosophy, logic,
  mathematics and science
• founded Pragmatism - reaction to metaphysics
  Do not block the way of inquiry
• his work encompasses the theories of semiotics
  and he published widely from around 1860 onwards

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introduction to semiotics

• Saussure and Peirce worked independently but had
  very similar ideas
• Peirce - defined three categories of signs
• Icon - resembles the sign, eg a trip hazard
  safety sign, a photograph, a spoken word like
  bang!
• Index - a direct link between the sign and the
  object, eg smoke is a sign of fire, a roundabout
  road sign is directly linked to the road junction
  it signifies
• Symbol - no logical connection between the sign
  and what it means, eg the biohazard safety sign,
  a countrys flag
• Saussure - as a linguist interested mainly in
  words and defined only two categories of sign
• Iconic - very much like Peirces icon, eg
  onomatopoeic words
• Arbitrary - as Peirces symbols, there is no
  direct relationship between the signifier and the
  sign, eg the vast majority of the components of
  language

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introduction to semiotics

• A single sign frequently fulfils the requirements
  of all categories
• the pictogram resembles a hand, so is iconic
• it is part of a set of signs for which we have
  international agreement, prohibited, so it is
  also a symbol
• when it is placed in context it becomes an index
  sign, because part of its meaning comes from its
  placement in the real world

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introduction to semiotics

• Peirce identifies three properties for signs that
  map to his categories
• firstness - the sense of a sign, eg anxiety on
  seeing the radioactivity sign
• secondness - the physical relation of the sign to
  reality, eg the proximity of the sign to the
  danger it signifies
• thirdness - the mental level that brings the
  other two together, eg there is danger here, I
  feel scared, I must leave!

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sources

• Devleopment of the original radioactivity symbol
  at Berkeley
• http//www.orau.org/ptp/articlesstories/radwarnsym
  bstory.htm
• Commission Directive 2001/59/EC, 6 August 2001
  specifying labelling of hazardous materials
• http//eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?
  uriCELEX32001L0059ENHTML
• Press release from the International Atomic
  Energy Agency about the new ionising radiation
  hazard sign
• http//www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2007/radiation
  symbol.html
• HAZMAT standard hazardous materials signs,
  contained in EU Directive
• Directive 67/548/EEC
• Short interview with Charles Baldwin about the
  development of the biohazard symbol
• http//www.hms.harvard.edu/orsp/coms/BiosafetyReso
  urces/History-of-Biohazard-Symbol.htm
• illustrations from wiki commons project
• Chandler, Daniel (1994) Semiotics for Beginners
• http//www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/