Havi Murungi

Visual Communication and Graphical Form: a Semiotic and Empirical Investigation Havi Murungi

A problem related to the religious connotations of current emblems for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement which had led to a new symbol proposal in 2000 presented an opportunity to examine the comparative effectiveness of pictorial, schematic, and abstract symbols; to assess the tenability of Saussure's signifier-signified arbitrary sign relationship in the context of visual representations; to validate Peirce's semiotic theories of iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity in relation to graphical symbol form; to gauge the utility of ISO 9186: 2001 in a new context; and to evaluate the suitability of current and proposed symbols to represent visually key attributes of the movement. This book presents the results of this investigation; it demonstrates the semiosis of pictorial, schematic, and abstract graphical forms overlapping to the extent that graphical form has limited functional utility. That notwithstanding, by analysing the semiosis of symbols of differing graphical forms, one has the potential to gauge with greater accuracy symbol functioning and hence recommend specific symbol types for specific uses which leads to more successful visual communication.