Semiotics and designing

Preamble: theory and practice

Semiotics has been present in design theory for a considerable time:
twenty-five years, at least. It has had a ghostly presence, as a pos
sibility or promise, but never quite pinned down; its identity and
its place within design have remained uncertain.Two factors can
be identified as explanations of this. First, the problems of the semi
otic enterprise itself. Is it a discipline in its own right, or rather a
mediating inter-discipline? An art or a science? What is its relation
to linguistics? Semiotics or semiology? Peirce or Saussure? And,
if Saussure, then in which edition?The semiotic literature is large
in ground-clearing discussion of such issues, and not so large in
contributions that put semiotic ideas into practice.The second fac
tor in the frustrated relation of semiotics to design has been the
difficulties of designers in constructing theories about their own
activities. What is the nature of design? Is it sensible to think of one
all-embracing activity of design, from engineering at one extreme
to fashion design at another? If it is a job and a profession, can it
be a discipline too? Can it have its own theories, or must it always
borrow from other fields of theory? Given the intractability of these
conundrums, it is no wonder that the theme of semiotics and design
has proved so largely unrewarding.
The notion of a theory of design can be clarified by making the
distinction between ideas or theories that bear on the practice of
designing, and those that concern the criticism or appreciation of
design work. Of course, this cannot be a sharp distinction. Design
ers are ordinary people too: we live in a common world. Historical
knowledge, for example, spans the divisions of design practice and
criticism of design; while it may be generated by non-practitioners,
it feeds into the consciousness of those producing new artefacts.
And, in general, it is a condition of the well-being of designing and
design theory that they stay in touch with the common world: the
world for which they work. Nevertheless, despite this recognition
of shared ground, the very notion of designing, as a distinct and
professionalized activity, carries with it the supposition that there
could be a body of theory peculiar to it. So one can proceed on the
assumption that there will be a need for theories that bear on the
practice of design - the field of design method - and, as another
matter (though a related one), for theories that illuminate design
products.
Much of what is said of semiotics suggests that it belongs with
those theories that help us to understand the products of design.
Thus David Sless (1986) likens the semiotician to a fashion critic
(not a designer). Semiotics is always described as being concerned
with reading, with decoding, with interpreting.These are essential
activities - and reading is certainly an activity and a construction of
meaning. Nevertheless, to interpret something given is one thing; to
determine and to oversee its material production is another. Again,
the distinction is not an absolutely clear one, and should not be
overstressed. For designing is not creation out of nothing (as in the
idea of the genius-artist, conjuring unexplainable beauties from a
void). Rather it is a matter of working, usually with given materials,
constrained by many interconnected and often pressing factors.
Consider a graphic designer, hurrying to complete layouts for
a catalogue by next Monday. Which photographs to choose? It may
be a compromise between those that show best what needs to be
shown, and those that show less but which would reproduce better.
The designer acts as an interpreter of the meaning of images; and it
is in such moments that theoretical understanding comes to play its
part in practical design work.To stay with this example of choosing
photographs, it may well be that recent developments of theory, in
discussions of the meanings of images, are coming to influence
the ways in which designers are deploying images. For example,
the question of whether to crop an image, whether to show the
edge of the frame, whether to bleed it off the page.These questions
are absolutely practical (the stuff of everyday graphic design) and
also entail matters of high theory, in their concern with the repre
sentation of the world: does the imposition of a frame deny the
continuum of reality, or does it rather acknowledge that we must
always employ such markers in perception?
Such an example suggests that theoretical reflection and practi
cal action do best when they coincide and play off against each
other. But theory and practice are different, even if they can be
Intertwined. In the case of the person examining photographs, the
activity could be either theoretical or practical - it depends on how
I t is directed.The critic may look as intensely as the designer, and
may even earn money with this looking (if it results in some article
mreview), but the difference becomes apparent when we consider
the kind of demand placed on each viewer and the contexts in which
i he viewers are acting. If the critic works to formulate ideas, the
designer works to get the images produced (or reproduced) in a
thoroughly real, material sense.While both may work to deadlines
and under pressure, the pressures on the designer - the responsibil
ity for a job of production - are of a different kind from those on a
critic. So the two worlds of theory and practice come to distinguish
themselves: the library or the private study (usually a world of sol
itary activity), and the more social world of the design office - its
shelves populated by trade catalogues, directories, files, and speci
mens of work.Theory becomes manifest in books and journals, in
lecture and seminar rooms - and splits off from the practice of the
design office or workshop.
The promise of semiotics
I he large and simple attraction of semiotics to design theorists is
that it offers a concern with the meaning of objects and images.
Information theory, which had provided the set of ideas most bor
rowed from in conceptions of design activity, can postulate no more
than signals: disturbances in a cycle, passing down a channel, from
an unintelligent emitter to an unintelligent receiver.There is no
semantic dimension here. Semiotics introduces the sign, and with
it the whole domain of meaning and the human world; and thus
might point a way out of the aridities of information theory.
Information theory may have had its day as a source of ideas
and metaphors with which to think about designing (this reliance
was at its peak in the 1950s, and lasted well into the 1960s), but we
are still living under the spell of information* - with the spread
and popularization of information technology. In this now univer
sal phrase, information serves to suggest the component of intel
ligence or software that differentiates this new technology from the
old. On the other hand, and in other contexts, information sug
gests the communication of essential messages (as against the frip-
peries of press advertising, for example), whose effectiveness can be
really evaluated and probably quantified.The name of this journal
testifies to the hopes that reside in this notion of information, as do
the courses in information design or visual information' that now
seem to be springing up - where previously there had been mere
graphic design. Manoeuvres in the labelling of courses may not
amount to much more than a change of head-gear (with no effect
on what goes on underneath) - though, even as such, they suggest at
least a wish to come to better grips with the subject. And though the
current vogue for information may be partly traceable to a theory
that proved a dead end for designers, this cannot be used as a stick
with which to beat present attempts to direct graphic design to mat
ters of need.
In this context of information design, with its characteristic
emphasis on users requirements, an awareness of the semantic
dimension becomes all the more apposite: as a continual reminder
that understanding is more than just reception of messages, but
entails a construction of meaning and that this meaning is subject
to influence from a very large set of factors. In the fundamental
insight of Saussure, linguistic signs are arbitrary and unmotivated:
there is no necessary connection between the meaning of any word
and its phonological structure. But, in the realm of visual depiction
too, the meaning of an image is never obvious. A photograph may
bear the imprint of reality (light acting on film at the moment of
exposure), but even - perhaps especially - the meaning of a photo
graphic image is never obvious. It may show a tree, yes; but what
kind of tree? Here it is the viewer who decides, according to learned
categories. What season of the year? How old is the tree? When
was the photograph taken? Was there a wind blowing? What is the
importance of such considerations in understanding the image?
The presence of a semantic dimension is inevitable. It invades
even those communications that intend to be purely functional:
texts and images are always produced by particular people with par
ticular purposes, and so bear the traces of human intention. For
example, the character of the producing institution can be seen in
the linguistic and visual qualities of government forms: both (as is
well understood) in the traditional byzantine-bureaucratic produc
tions, and (as may be less obvious) in the recent experiments in
simplified and humanized forms.The latter lay claim to a new spirit
of enlightenment, or efficiency through the language of sympathy.
Analysis of the meanings and motivations of seemingly banal
artefacts has indeed been one of the contributions of the semiotic
habit of thought, as David Sless suggests.The consideration of se
mantics can open up the dimensions of ideology and of politics.
This semiotic contribution is in the first place to the criticism of
products, and it has largely remained as criticism. Any effect on
the designers of products has come indirectly, through processes of
feedback and through slow infiltration into the common culture.
In considering the possible contribution of semiotics to graphic
design, as in the example of a semiotically-inspired analysis of gov
ernment communications, it is necessary to make an obvious but
fundamental distinction within the dimension of meaning. Am
text has a level of simple or literal meaning, and a level of attributed
meaning. A form that requires a woman to state whether she is mar
ried or not has that as part of its literal meaning. An analysis of this
question on a deeper level would consider assumptions behind it: of
how women and men in this society are expected to conduct their
lives; what are normal arrangements; what is accepted or condoned
or refused. Such factors seep into the verbal texture of government
communications (the smallest details of sentence construction and
vocabulary), and they will also, there seems little reason to doubt,
mark the visual texture of these productions. Or, to return to the
example of the photograph of the tree, the literal meaning of the
image has already been disclosed - it is just that (a tree). The further,
deeper analysis might consider such things as the way this tree
stands against dark clouds: a suggestion of threat; or does the tree
betoken shelter and safety from a coming storm? Isolated in this
flattened landscape it seems to be a last protest against rapacious
agriculture. And so the analysis would go on.
It may be doubted that this kind of analysis has anything espe
cially semiotic* about it. Is this not what any pragmatic commenta
tor, sensitive to meanings and implications, has always done? Inso
far as one accepts that semiotics amounts to this kind of analysis,
one then accepts that the hoped-for science of signs has become
just a style of thought, characterized by a concern to demythologize,
to show up latent ideology, using a language marked by a stock of
key words (code, discourse, text, denote, signify, etc). It seems that
attempts to develop a strict, quasi-scientific semiotic analysis have
been given up by the cultural critics who might contribute to design
theory.
The language analogy and its perils
One of the attractions of the semiotic view is that it has offered the
means of attributing meanings to otherwise mute objects. In one
field of design in particular - architecture - semiotics was welcomed
by some critics and by theoretically-minded architects as providing
a way through the obstacles against which post-Second-World-War
versions of modernism had foundered. Semiotics provided a le
gitimation for elements in a building for which justification on
grounds of simple function was lacking: elements of decoration.
The vogue for semiotics in architecture is passing, now that the re
action against modernism has gained enough confidence to follow
its instincts without intellectual justification. Buildings can again
have meanings - as has been their ancient right, until the interven
tion of certain versions of modernism.
The analogy with language proposed by semioticians has the
attraction and the sense of reassurance that is brought by all such
attributions of larger significance. J ust as with Freudian theories,
we are told that however confused and muddled the immediate real
ity seems to be, it is amenable to analysis, can be shown to have
causes and reasons, and can even be construed as a system. So, if
we are to believe the suggestion that communication of all kinds
can be understood on the model of verbal language, then we should
expect to find an ordering system of the same kind as that found
in language.
The difficulties of transposing linguistic analysis to other areas
of enquiry are by now clear. For example, in the field of pictorial
imagery, if one speaks of the syntax* of an image, what then in the
image corresponds to the adjective, what to the noun*, what to the
verb, and so on? And even if someone were to posit isolable units,
analogous to linguistic ones, in a non-linguistic example, can the
analogy be sustained across a large number of examples, as ideas
of linguistic structure can? It seems that such analogies can be no
more than vague ones, and that they collapse as soon as one tries to
work them out in any detail.
A particular confusion is likely in the application of semiotics
to graphic design. Semiotics - or rather semiology (the strand that
derives not from Peirce but from Saussure, and which has been
most influential among commentators on visual images) - has been
largely developed by the application of ideas taken from linguistics.
This borrowing is evident in the anthropology of Lvi-Strauss, in
the cultural analysis of Barthes, the psychoanalysis of Lacan, and
in the trains of thought and investigation that all this work has set
up. Here the linguistic analogy is stretched beyond mere analogy,
to constitute an enormous extension of language itself: the world
becomes a text, to be read and decoded or (in the most recent twist
of theory) deconstructed.There are considerable objections to this
view.
An immediate and local objection from the point of view of
graphic design is the confusion caused when the apparatus of semi
otics is applied to material that is closely allied to the linguistic: the
text matter which is so large a component of graphic design.The
semiotic tools, when turned back from the non-linguistic towards
the linguistically saturated object of enquiry, come to seem at best
over-emphatic, at worst superfluous.The first, literal meanings of
a text can be understood without the application of the special ar
moury of semiotics, designed to unpick the meanings of mute ob
jects.
Terminological confusions - such as Roger Smith discusses
(1986)- make clear the unwieldiness of applying semiotics to graph
ic design. Words such as sign and symbol, which have acquired
precise and specialized meanings in semiotics, are then fed back
into the gross, material world of design - where sign may mean a
rectangular sheet of wood bearing painted letters. While symbol
in semiotics is a fairly precise category of sign, in graphic design it
tends to be used very loosely, to refer to any more or less abstracted
image that stands in for some idea or human enterprise.These con
fusions are then compounded by the disagreements within semiot
ics over terminology. All of which would help to explain why semiot
ics has never really proved of much assistance in the designing of
graphic symbols and systems of symbols - the field for which best
hopes for it as a contribution to practice have been expressed.The
apparently common terms of semiotic theory and graphic design
seemed to raise in some graphic designers hopes of help from the
elixir of the science of signs: ungrounded promise is a characteris
tic of elixirs; characteristic also is the disappointment that follows
application.
The gravest objection to a large strand of semiotics follows from
certain emphases of Saussure.1In making his celebrated distinc
tions between langue* and parole*, and between synchronic and
diachronic approaches to the study of language, Saussure was con
cerned to move linguistics in the directions indicated by the first
terms of these pairs. His aim was a study of the system of language
(Malangue*) and its rules and structures, with correspondingly less
interest in the idiosyncrasies of individual utterance (la parole).
And linguistics should turn away from its nineteenth-century, exclu
sively historical (diachronic) concern with the evolution of forms of
language - towards a (synchronic) study of the system as a function
ing whole, at any one time. Saussures position can be seen as a nec
essary and appropriate one, given the context in which he was work
ing. But that provides no justification for the semiotic enterprise of
taking over Saussurian linguistics and applying it to non-linguistic
material. One objection here is the doubtfulness of the linguistic
analogy, as already discussed. And this criticism becomes all the
stronger when one considers the characteristic emphasis of Saus
surian linguistics on structures, without history and removed from
the ordinary world of discourse between people. An ahistorical ap
proach may be reasonable in a discussion of language - a uniquely
slow-changing and intricate human institution - but such an ap
proach becomes misleading when transferred to material of a quite
different character.This material* is just that: composed of physical
matter, where, by contrast, language is non-material and abundant.
Physical objects, whose meanings the semiotician lays claim to,
have a substance and a presence that discussion limited to signifi
cance* and structure* (mental, abstract structure) cannot begin to
touch.
The tendency of semiotics, particularly as it has been developed
l.This follows the line of argument suggested by Timpanaro (1970,
pp. 135-219); and see also the criticisms advanced by Eagleton (1983,
pp. 109-15) and Anderson (1985, pp. 40-55).
in the hot-houses of seminar rooms and academic journals, has
been to ignore the material nature of objects and conditions of pro
duction and use (their history). Even in the discussion of literature,
where a non-materialist approach might be plausible (if literature is
seen as composed of non-material language and ideas), the abstract
interests of semiotics have proved unrewarding.Thus, in the literary
criticism inspired by the structural anthropology of Lvi-Strauss,
the mechanism of a text is unpicked and laid out, usually as a series
of binary oppositions; but always leaving the reader with a feeling
of so what? what does such analysis explain?The structuralists
have not made any impression on the criticism of design, partly
for reasons of the non-academic and mysteriously enclosed world
of design. Hut it would be hard to see what success structuralism
could have in dealing with an activity so embedded in the material
world - a world of deadlines, invoices, machine constraints, and the
properties of glue.
The distance of recent theory from the world of practice is very
marked - ironically - in the work of those who have been among the
loudest in professions of materialism and political commitment. In
Britain, this may be seen in the field of cultural studies, for example
in some of the articles published in the journal Block. The dominant
influence here (it is now on the wane) has been the structuralist
Marxism of Althusser, in which the business of refining and polish
ing the theoretical apparatus absorbs all the critics interest and
itself comes to be seen as practice; any concern for the world of
everyday, practical realities is lost, and, if raised, dismissed as em
piricism. History is denied in this synchronic view, and with this
denial there disappears any prospect of an explanation of material
objects and processes.
The growing body of work in cultural studies is of some impor
tance to the criticism of design - in particular as this exists in the
theoretical and historical components of design educational cours
es (what is called in Britain complementary studies, liberal stud
ies, related studies, or some other suggestion of the rag-bag) -
and in view of the possibility that those teaching on these courses
will turn to a semiotically-influenced set of ideas as a source of
theory.The result of this teaching on the education and practice of
designers is not easy to imagine: it is hard to see how what is often
remote theory could impinge on workshop and studio practice. Hut
one source of difficulty in this relation is clear: cultural studies has
been developed in application to popular culture and is in opposi
tion not only to an exclusive, high culture but also to all distinctions
of value within culture. It thus conflicts with the highminded, re
forming and occasionally revolutionary tradition of designing (of
William Morris - and company), which would certainly maintain
distinctions of good and bad in the ways in which the material world
is ordered: on such presuppositions must any confident design edu
cation be based.
The passing of structuralist semiotics
It is characteristic of graphic design education in Britain that it
should be registering the presence of semiotics a decade or so after
these ideas have passed from the centre of the world of high intel
lectual discussion.That is, if one identifies semiotics with the Paris
ian or in fact Barthesian structuralist semiology, rather than with
the tradition of Peirce and Charles Morris. In his later writings,
Barthes came to abandon the method-governed approach of his
structuralist phase (1964a, 1964b) for an approach that absorbed el
ements of semiotics but which gave up pretensions to strict system
(1975, p.145; 1977).
It is not necessary here to investigate in any detail the trans
forming of structuralism into poststructuralism, and the implica
tions of this mutation for the semiotic theory that had been a part
of structuralism. Anderson and Eagleton (both 1983) have provided
succinct analyses of this development. It is clear that the shift to
poststructuralism promises no benefits for design theory. Its chief
ideas and slogans - as they will be percolated into complementary
studies courses, for example - offer no better purchase on the world
of designing than did structuralism: less, insofar as the notion of
language becomes further inflated to eradicate any idea of indi
vidual identity and responsibility.The emergence of poststructur
alism does however diminish (through its sometimes convincing
criticisms of its earlier self) the claims of semiotics to constitute a
science or discipline. Semiotics may provide scattered insights, but
those still looking for a ready-made theory on which to depend will
not find it in the corpus of semiotic writing.
This returns us to the question of a theory of design. It seems
clear that no single, self-contained theory will ever be adequate to
an activity as complex, various, and as rooted in the material world
as designing: and certainly no off-the-peg theory bought from the
academic fashion-houses. Design theory needs to correspond to the
informal and mixed nature of its object - the activity of designing
- and will inevitably borrow ideas, but needs also to think for itself,
from practice.
Post-amble: the suggestion of a visual/vcrbal rhetoric
This paper has considered relations between semiotics and design,
and has assumed some acquaintance with the essential ideas of
semiotics, as taken up from the writings of Peirce and Saussure.
It may be helpful now to point to the few contributions to the semi
otic literature that bear directly on designing.The most substantial
work has been that emanating from the Hochschule fiir Gestaltung
Ulm, under the guidance of Toms Maldonado. David Sless refers to
the papers published in Uppercase (Maldonado and Bonsiepe, sepa
rately and jointly, igGiJ.These are of considerable interest, though
they suffer from a wooden translation that makes difficult ideas un
necessarily obscure. Work on semiotics by Maldonado (1959) and
Bonsiepe (1965; 1968) also appeared, in rather good English ver
sions, in the schools journal Ulm, which may be as inaccessible as
Uppercase but is worth the effort of hunting down.The passage
on semiotics and design in the book that Maldonado wrote after
leaving Ulm(1972, pp. 119-23) is of interest as an epilogue to that
phase of work, up to 1968 - the year that proved fatal for the life;,
as for other things.The Ulmcontribution is still relevant for its
strenuous investigation of theories that might bear on practice, and
for a continuously critical attitude that enabled it to work through
a phase of unreasonable devotion to scientific method and on to
wards a more socially engaged position.
The work of Maldonado and Bonsiepe (and one or two others
associated with the Hfo Ulm) may seem uncomfortably intellectual
by certain standards (those of British design journalism, for exam
ple), but it never quite loses contact with the ordinary world of
designing. One of its contributions was the beginnings of a new
visual/verbal rhetoric: conceived as a development from classical
rhetoric, but modified by the inter-discipline of semiotics. A par
ticular appeal of this is its possible function as a common ground
for theoretical and practical work.This rhetoric would be a way of
understanding the mechanisms of a visual/verbal product and also
an aid that could inform (and improve) visual/verbal production.
The call for rhetorical analysis has surfaced more recently in the
work of some literary critics. Thus Terry Eagleton closes his bracing
survey of theories of literature with a proposal for the revival of
this ancient practice that saw speaking and writing not merely as
textual objects, to be aesthetically contemplated or endlessly decon
structed, but as forms of activity inseparable from the wider social
relations between writers and readers, orators and audiences, and
as largely unintelligible outside the social purposes and conditions
in which they were embedded (1983, p. 206).This remark, with
appropriate substitution of terms (designingand producing for
speaking and writing, etc), applies just as well to graphic design.
So far, in the articles by Bonsiepe and in Barthess venture into
this field (1964b), visual rhetoric has treated only persuasive com
munication of the most obvious kind - press advertisements. Bon
siepe (1965, p. 30) - writing clearly as a designer - was concerned
to dispute the suggestion that persuasive (rhetorical) communica
tion was limited to advertising: Informative assertions are inter
larded with rhetoric to a greater or lesser degree. Information with
out rhetoric is a pipe-dream which ends up in the break-down of
communication and total silence. Bure information exists for the
designer only in arid abstraction. As soon as he begins to give it con
crete shape, to bring it within the range of experience, the process
of rhetorical infiltration begins. However, three paragraphs further
on, Bonsiepe retreats from this position, and concedes that a train
time-table or a table of logarithms might be examples of informa
tion innocent of all taint of rhetoric. One doubts this.The truth
seems rather to lie in Bonsiepes first and more absolute statement:
that as soon as content takes concrete shape* it takes on associa
tions and meanings that exist beyond the hypothetical domain of
pure information. Believers in purity of visual/verbal information
might seem to be on stronger ground with cases of text or image
produced on screens or by highly constrained typewriters.The les
son from such examples might be that a certain degree of technical
sophistication is necessary to enable recognizably different prod
ucts to be constructed by the same means; and also that a period of
time is necessary, while conventions of arrangement evolve.
In two recent papers (1984a; 1984b), Hanno Ehses has revived
Bonsiepes suggestion of a visual/verbal rhetoric.2Ehsess presenta
tion is attractive: since all human communication is, in one way
or another, infiltrated rhetorically, design for visual/verbal commu
nication cannot be exempt from that fact (1984b, p. 4). So, he sug
gests, to accept that all communication is concerned to persuade, is
to accept the social and moral-political dimensions of all designing,
and it is to accept that all our actions and artefacts must answer
to moral-political arguments, and it is to reiterate that there is no
sphere of pure technique or pure information.
The difficulties of some new rhetoric appear when one starts
on the business of applying the concepts of classical rhetoric in
specific instances. One has to get over the barriers of Latin and
of the complex definitions of rhetorical figures. In the practical
experiment on which he reports, Ehses (1984a) asked his students
to design a poster for a performance of Macbeth; each student was
to produce a poster that corresponded visually to one of the rhetori
cal figures (antithesis, irony, metaphor, personification, and so on).
The approach seemed successful to Ehses and his students - as
a simple aid to thinking and to producing ideas that might not
have been promoted otherwise. One knows this as a feature of any
design method concerned to generate alternative procedures - and
the least virtue of a design method is that it suggests a starting
point and a way of getting down to work. At this quite modest level,
as a stimulus and a guide to overall concepts in design work, a
visual/verbal rhetoric would seem promising - in teaching above
2. Another recent call for a visual rehetoric has come from Michael
Tvvyman (1979). Twymans long project of the description and clas
sification of a postulated visual language lies outside the scope of this
paper: the linguistic science that he sees as a model for a theory of
typography is unspecified, though presumably not of the Saussurian-
semiotic variety (Twyman 1982). Hut in this project, as in semiotically-
derived work, an informal analogy (visual things are a hit like language:
they have meanings) is perilously inflated to a suggestion of elaborate
system.
all. But whether this rhetoric can go beyond identification of broad
concept (antithesis, etc) to touch the details of text and image has
yet to be shown.The dangers of rhetoric are fairly obvious and are
evident in the history of the degeneration of classical verbal rhet
oric: of a new academicism and formalism, in which guide-lines
grow into a restrictive network of fences.
As regards the analysis and criticism of design, the promise of
rhetoric is that it can open up communication between the worlds
of theory and practice, by providing common terminology and pro
cedures. If this were to prove itself, then rhetoric would have suc
ceeded where semiotics, which has remained irredeemably in the
world of theory, has failed. But it is not at all clear how this visual/
verbal rhetoric could extend its concerns back from the artefact
produced to the full range of factors that inform the production
of the artefact, nor how it could interrogate the fine details of an
object. Again, as with semiotics, there is so much that this theory
cannot discuss.
References (key dates are those of lirst publication)
Anderson, P. 1983. In the tracks of historical materialism, Verso
Barthes, R. 1964a. Elements of semiology Jonathan Cape, 1967
Barthes, R. 1964b. Rhetoric of the image, in: R. Barthes, Image, music, text,
Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1977
Barthes, R. 1975. Roland Barthes, Macmillan, 1977
Barthes, R. 1977. inaugural lecture. College de France in: S.Sontag(ed.),
A Barthes reader, Jonathan Cape, 1982
Bonsiepe, G. 1961. 'Persuasive communication: towards a visual rhetoric,
Uppercase, no. 5, pp. 13-34
Bonsiepe, G. 1965. Visual/verbal rhetoric, Ulm, nos. 14/15/16, pp. 23-40
Bonsiepe, G. 1968. Semantic analysis, Ulm, no. 21, pp. 33-7
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Ehses, H. 1984a. RepresentingMacbeth: a case study in visual rhetoric,
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Ehses, H. 1984b. 'Rhetoric and design, Icographic, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 4-6
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Maldonado,T. 1961a. Notes on communication', Uppercase, no. 5, pp. 5-10
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This article was designed to complement two other pieces in that issue
of 1nj: by David Sless and Roger Smith.
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