190
Semiotics and designing
Robin Kinross works as a
freelance editorial typographer
and writes on the theory and
history of designing.
Author's address:
125 Torriano Avenue
London N W 5 2RX
© Robin Kinross 1986
Theories of design may inform practice or aid
Robin Kinross
Preamble: theory and practice
Semiotics has been present in design theory for a
considerable time: 25 years, at least. It has had a
ghostly presence, as a possibility 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 semiotic enterprise itself. Is it a
discipline in its own right, or rather a mediating
inter-discipline? An art or a science? What is its rela­
tion to linguistics? 'Semiotics' or 'semiology'? Peirce
or Saussure? And, if Saussure, then in which edi­
tion? The semiotic literature is large in ground-
clearing discussion of such issues, and not so large
in contributions that put semiotic ideas into prac­
tice. The second factor 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
Information Design Journal 4:3 (1986), 190-198. DOI 10.1075/idj.4.3.02kin
ISSN 0142-54711 Ε-ISSN 1569-979X © John Benjamins Publishing Company
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.
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.
Designers are ordinary people too: we live in a com­
mon 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 artifacts. And, in general, it is a con­
dition 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 professional­
ized 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
Robin Kinross · Semiotics and designing
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 under-
stand the products of design. Thus David Sless,
elsewhere in this issue, 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 intercon-
nected and often pressing factors.
Consider a graphic designer, hurrying to com-
plete layouts for a catalogue by next Monday.
Which photographs to choose? It may be a com-
promise 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.in-
terpreter 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 discussion
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 im-
age, whether to show the edge of the frame, whether
to bleed it off the page. These questions are ab-
solutely practical (the stuff of everyday graphic
design) and also entail matters of high theory, in
their concern with the representation of the world:
does the imposition of a frame deny the continuum
191
of reality, or does it rather acknowledge that we
must always employ such markers in perception?
Such an example suggests that theoretical reflec-
tion and practical action do best when they coincide
and play off against each other. But theory and prac-
tice 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 it 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
or review), but the difference becomes apparent
when we consider the kind of demand placed on
each viewer and the contexts in which the 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 respon-
sibility 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
solitary activity), and the more social world of the
design office—its shelves populated by trade
catalogues, directories, files, and specimens 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
The 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 borrowed
from in conceptions of design activity, can postulate
no more than signals: disturbances in a cycle, pass-
ing down a channel, from an unintelligent emitter to
an unintelligent receiver. There is no semantic
dimension here. Semiotics introduces the sign, and
Inf. Des. J. 4, 3 (1986) 190-98
192 Robin Kinross · Semiotics and designing
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 universal phrase, 'informa-
tion' serves to suggest the component of intelligence
or software that differentiates this new technology
from the old. On the other hand, and in other con-
texts, 'information' suggests the communication of
essential messages (as against the fripperies 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 partly be 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 matters 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 'un-
Inf. Des. J. 4, 3 (1986) 190-98
motivated': there is no necessary connection be-
tween 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
photographic image is never obvious. It may show a
tree, yes; but what kind of tree? Here it is the viewer
who decides, according to learnt 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 in-
evitable. 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 in-
tention. 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 productions, and (as may be less ob-
vious) 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 artifacts has indeed been one of the
contributions of the semiotic habit of thought, as
David Sless suggests. The consideration of seman-
tics 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 com-
mon culture.
In considering the possible contribution of
Robin Kinross · Semiotics and designing
semiotics to graphic design, as in the example of a
semiotically-inspired analysis of government
communications—it is necessary to make an obvious
but fundamental distinction within the 'dimension
of meaning'. Any 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 ac-
cepted or condoned or refused. Such factors seep in-
to the verbal texture of government communica-
tions (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 especially 'semiotic' about it. Is this not
what any pragmatic commentator, sensitive to
meanings and implications, has always done? In-
sofar 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
193
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 archi-
tects as providing a way through the obstacles
against which post-Second-World-War versions of
modernism had foundered. Semiotics provided a
legitimation for elements in a building for which
justification on grounds of simple function was lack-
ing: elements of decoration. The vogue for semiotics
in architecture is passing, now that the reaction
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 intervention of certain
versions of modernism.
The analogy with language proposed by semioti-
cians has the attraction and the sense of reassurance
that is brought by all such attributions of larger
significance. Just as with Freudian theories, we are
told that however confused and muddled the im-
mediate reality 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 ex-
ample, 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
Inf. Des. J. 4, 3 (1986) 190-98
194 Robin Kinross · Semiotics and designing
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 in-
fluential among commentators on visual images)—
has been largely developed by the application of
ideas taken from linguistics. As, for example, in the
anthropology of Lévi-Stauss, in the cultural analysis
of Barthes, the psychoanalysis of Lacan, and in the
trains of thought and investigation that this work
has set up. Here the linguistic analogy is stretched
beyond mere analogy, to constitute an enormous ex-
tension of language itself: the world becomes a
'text', to be read and decoded or (in the most recent
twist of theory) deconstructed. There are con-
siderable 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 semiotics 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 armoury of semiotics,
designed to unpick the meanings of mute objects.
Terminological confusions—such as Roger Smith
discusses elsewhere in this issue—make clear the un-
wieldiness of applying semiotics to graphic design.
Words such as 'sign' and 'symbol', which have ac-
quired precise and specialized meanings in
semiotics, are then fed back into the gross, material
world of design—where 'sign' may mean 'a rec-
Inf. Des. J. 4, 3 (1986) 190-98
tangular 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 a
abstracted image that stands in for some idea or
human enterprise. These confusions are then com-
pounded by the disagreements within semiotics over
terminology. All of which would help to explain
why semiotics 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 ex-
pressed. 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
characteristic 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.1 In making his celebrated distinctions
between langue and parole, and between synchronic
and diachronic approaches to the study of language,
Saussure was concerned to move linguistics in the
directions indicated by the first terms of these pairs.
His aim was a study of the system of language (la
langue) and its rules and structures with correspond-
ingly less interest in the idiosyncrasies of individual
utterance (la parole). And linguistics should turn
away from its nineteenth-century, exclusively
historical (diachronic) concern with the evolution of
forms of language—towards a (synchronic) study of
the system as a functioning whole, at any one time.
Saussure's position can be seen as a necessary and
appropriate one, given the context in which he was
working. But that provides no justification for the
semiotic enterprise of taking over Saussurian
1. 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 (1983, pp. 40-55).
Robin Kinross · Semiotics and designing
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 con-
siders the characteristic emphasis of Saussurian
linguistic on 'structures', without history and
removed from the ordinary world of discourse be-
tween people. An historical approach may be
reasonable in a discussion of language—a uniquely
slow-changing and intricate human institution—but
such an approach 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 'significance' and
'structure' (mental, abstract structure) cannot begin
to touch.
The tendency of semiotics, particularly as it has
been developed in the hot-houses of seminar rooms
and academic journals, has been to ignore the
material nature of objects and conditions of produc-
tion 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 struc-
tural anthropology of Lévi-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 im-
pression on the criticism of design, partly for
reasons of the non-academic and mysteriously
enclosed world of design. But 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 con-
195
straints, 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 profes-
sions of materialism and political commitment. In
Britain, this may be seen in the field of cultural
studies, for example in some of the articles pub-
lished in the journal Block. The dominant influence
here (it is now on the wane) has been the struc-
turalist marxism of Althusser, in which the business
of refining and polishing the theoretical apparatus
absorbs all the critic's 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 'empiricism'. History is denied in this
synchronic view, and with this denial there disap-
pears any prospect of an explanation of material ob-
jects and processes.
The growing body of work in cultural studies is of
some importance to the criticism of design—in par-
ticular as this exists in the theoretical and historical
components of design educational courses (what is
called in Britain 'complementary studies', 'liberal
studies', '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. But one
source of difficulty in this relation is clear: cultural
studies has been developed in application to popular
culture and is in opposition not only to an exclusive,
high culture but also to all distinctions of value
within culture. It thus conflicts with the high-
minded, reforming and occasionally revolutionary
tradition of designing (of William Morris—and com-
pany), which would certainly maintain distinctions
of good and bad in the ways in which the material
Inf. Des. J. 4, 3 (1986) 190-98
196 Robin Kinross · Semiotics and designing
world is ordered: on such presuppositions must any
confident design education 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 intellectual
discussion. That is, if one identifies semiotics with
the Parisian 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 ap­
proach that absorbed elements of semiotics but
which gave up pretensions to strict system (1975,
ρ.145;1977).
It is not necessary here to investigate in any detail
the transforming of structuralism into post-
structuralism, and the implications of this mutation
for the semiotic theory that had been a part of struc­
turalism. Anderson and Eagleton (both 1983) have
provided succinct analyses of this development. It is
clear that the shift to post-structuralism promises no
benefits for design theory. Its chief ideas and
slogans—as they will be percolated into complemen­
tary studies courses, for example—offer no better
purchase on the world of designing than did struc­
turalism: less, insofar as the notion of language
becomes further inflated to eradicate any idea of in­
dividual identity and responsibility. The emergence
of post-structuralism 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 scat­
tered 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
Inf. Des. J. 4, 3 (1986) 190-98
theory will ever be adequate to an activity as com­
plex, 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/verbal
rhetoric
This paper has been concerned to consider 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 semiotic literature that bear
directly on designing. The most substantial work
has been that emanating from the Hochschule fur
Gestaltung, Ulm, under the guidance of Tomás
Maldonado. David Sless refers to the papers
published in Uppercase (Maldonado and Bonsiepe,
separately and jointly, 1961). These are of con-
siderable interest, though they suffer from a wooden
translation that makes difficult ideas unnecesarily
obscure. Work on semiotics by Maldonado (1959)
and Bonsiepe (1965; 1968) also appeared, in rather
good English versions, in the school's 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 in-
terest as an epilogue to that phase to work, up to
1968—the year that proved fatal for the HfG, as for
other things. The Ulm contribution is still relevant
for its strenuous investigation of theories that might
bear on practice, and for a continuously critical at-
titude that enabled it to work through a phase of
unreasonable devotion to scientific method and on
towards a more socially engaged position.
Robin Kinross · Semiotics and designing
The work of Maldonado and Bonsiepe (and one
or two others associated with the HfG Ulm) may
seem uncomfortably 'intellectual' by certain stand-
ards (those of British design journalism, for exam-
ple), but it never quite loses contact with the or-
dinary 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
particular 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 sur-
faced 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 speak-
ing 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 condi-
tions in which they were embedded' (1983, p.206).
This remark, with appropriate substitution of terms
('designing and producing' for 'speaking and
writing', etc), applies just as well to graphic design.
So far, in the articles by Bonsiepe and in Barthes'
venture into this field (1964b), visual rhetoric has
treated only 'persuasive communication' of the most
obvious kind—press advertisements. Bonsiepe
(1965, p.30)—writing clearly as a designer—was
concerned to dispute the suggestion that persuasive
(rhetorical) communication was limited to advertis-
ing: 'Informative assertions are interlarded with
rhetoric to a greater or lesser degree. Information
without rhetoric is a pipe-dream which ends up in
the break-down of communication and total silence.
197
"Pure" 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 ex-
perience, 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 information innocent of all taint of
rhetoric'. One doubts this. The truth seems rather
to lie in Bonsiepe's first and more absolute state-
ment: that as soon as content takes 'concrete shape'
it takes on associations and meanings that exist
beyond the hypothetical domain of pure informa-
tion. 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 lesson from such ex-
amples might be that a certain degree of technical
sophistication is necessary, to enable recognizably
different products 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 Bonsiepe's suggestion of a
visual/verbal rhetoric.2 Ehses' presentation is at-
tractive: 'since all human communication is, in one
way or another, infiltrated rhetorically, design for
visual/verbal communication cannot be exempt
from that fact' (1984b, p.4). So, he suggests, to ac-
cept that all communication is concerned to per-
suade is to accept the social and moral-political
dimensions of all designing, and it is to accept that
2. Another recent call for a 'visual rehetoric' has come from
Michael Twyman (1979). Twyman's long project of the des-
cription and classification 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). But in this project, as in semiotically-derived
work, an informal analogy (visual things are a bit like language:
they have meanings) is perilously inflated to a suggestion of
elaborate system.
Inf. Des. J. 4, 3 (1986) 190-98
198 Robin Kinross · Semiotics and designing

all our actions and artifacts 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 con­
cepts of classical rhetoric in specific instances. One
has to get over the barriers of Latin and of the com­
plex definitions of rhetorical figures. In the practical
experiment on which he reports, Ehses (1984a)
asked his students to design a poster for a per-
fomance of Macbeth; each student was to produce a
poster that corresponded visually to one of the
rhetorical figures (antithesis, irony, metaphor, per­
sonification, and so on). The approach seemed suc­
cessful 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 all. But whether this
rhetoric can go beyond identification of broad con­
cept ('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 rhetoric: of a
new academicism and formalism, in which
guidelines 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 com­
munication between the worlds of theory and prac­
tice, by providing common terminology and pro­
cedures. If this were to prove itself, then rhetoric
would have succeeded 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
artifact produced to the full range of factors that in­
form the production of the artifact, nor how it could
interrogate the fine details of an object. Again, as
with semiotics, there is so much that this theory
cannot discuss.

Anderson Ρ 1983 Bonsiepe G 1968 Maldonado T 1972

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