Exploring the microcosm of icon design: from the semiotic theory

Article Description: an analysis of the microscopic world of icons--from the semiotic theory.

Since the concept of graphical user interface was born in 1970, the first WIMP demo, the computer user interface from character development to the graphics age. After less than half a century of rapid development, with the attention of the Apple system and the popular beneficiaries of the Microsoft Windows system, the graphical user interface presents an endless variety of changes. In the face of these wonderful, perceptual and rational graphic interface design, the icon element undoubtedly plays an important role, want to explore the next icon in this micro-world.

First, start with the semiotic theory.

What is semiotics?

With the development of human society and the increasing of civilization, the symbol world is gradually enriched and perfected. As early as the original period of the past, the symbolic exchange was produced in the Ropes Chronicle, Totem ceremony, hieroglyphics of human civilization. From the concrete simple physical world to the abstract rich symbolic world, all forms of human spiritual culture are the product of symbolic activities.

"Symbol"--the carrier of Mark, mark and information, is a kind of object that the sensory system perceives, the object represents certain thing, the public agreement that the collective agrees with. Use simple codes to represent complex things or concepts. At the same time, it has the function of cognition and communication, and conveys information through the form of characters.

Since 19th century, semiotics has appeared in the source of linguistics, and subsequently originated from the three academic fields of structuralism linguistics, logic, cultural philosophy and aesthetics, and modern semiotics was born. According to the symbolic nature of language, in the pre-Qin period of our country to pay attention to it, thousands of years ago, "I Ching" is called the history of Semiotics is a great miracle, it has established the language that contains today's speech, semantics and pragmatics of the complete symbolic system.

The representation of semiotics in the graphical user interface belongs to the application level, in the field of semiotics application research, the foreign involvement is earlier. There are three ways to spread semiotics, one of which is applied in the Internet environment: the mode of common experience communication. This pattern is based on the common cognition formed by the common experience between the coder and the decoder, and finally contributes to what we call a symbol with a conventional character.

Semiotics part of the theoretical study

Saussure and Pierce are pioneers in the field of semiotics research, Saussure's structuralism has laid a basic concept for the study of European semiotics, and he has decomposed semiotics into signifier (signifier) and signified, which are the two parts of the signifier and the alleged object, namely form and content.

Compared with Saussure's research method, the paper focuses on the two sides of the signifier and the reference, and Pierce is a ternary research method. In his view, semiotics contains symbols, objective objects and explanations of these three items, making up for the part of Saussure that is not involved. Pierce is the American pragmatism philosophy, his semiotic theory is based on the logic research on the concept of meaning, representation and symbol, which is summed up in three categories: design sense, human experience, thinking three levels. That is, the relationship between media, object, and interpretation of the three elements. His theory is universal and applicable to any field, which is called "Generalized semiotics". Hear the most number of objects three lower-level symbols under the association layer: image Symbols (icon), identification symbols (Index), and symbolic symbols (symbol).

The semiotic nature of the icon microcosm has its own manifestations in three categories, and this paper focuses on the object correlation layer.

Icon Object Association Layer

The representation method of image symbols is characterized by realism or imitation of objects, and is based on similarity and has obvious perceptual characteristics. For example, the recycling station in the computer operating system is used in garbage cans to express the meaning of the document, the paper is represented by a folded corner, the meaning of the folder is directly characterized by the folder tool icon. The design of image symbols gives users a sense of pleasure in the use of cognitive processes, on the one hand, morphological semantics is more intuitive and easy to understand; On the other hand, in the nonphysical era, the perception of the virtual world can immediately associate with the physical world, which is why today's graphical interface more and more show a "quasi materialized" design.

The identity symbol is not the shape of the object which is directly traced by the graphic symbol, and it has a causal or close logical connection with the object of representation. The most common in daily life is the indicator in the public direction, since the building exits in the guidance system are usually characterized by the "door" graphic concept, the homepage of the site is used in the graphical user interface, which usually uses a small house graphic to characterize the browsing steps of the user to the current site's "Home Door", That is the home page. The graphical user interface also has a large number of use of the top and bottom in different directions, straight or curved arrows, they are from the traditional public-oriented system. Including the interface commonly used "refresh" icon, originated from the International Environmental Protection Organization of the Unified Certification identification of "recycling recycling" logo simplified.

In addition, the link nodes of navigation, menus, search, and other interactive controls are also identifiers.

The symbolic symbol has no similarity or direct connection with the object of the representation, it is the most abstract and implicit ideographic symbol in the large graphic symbol. It refers to the object and itself has no modelling similarity or association, but in the nature of the similarities, it is the group in the long-term labor practice formed by the customary way of representation. For example, corporate logos, letters, numbers, colors, postures, flags, religious images, these symbols with strong social and cultural backgrounds are symbols. For example, the shared icon, first appearing in the Microsoft XP operating system, is characterized by a hand-holding pattern, which has hitherto been used in icons of other interface media sharing semantics, and for example, thumbs up in the Web page to characterize the semantics of "support", which belong to the symbolic category of gestures. A logo representing a product or corporate image, usually the "home" icon on the navigation bar of its website, which is also used as a symbolic symbol.

In the graphical user interface, the use of symbolic symbols, in particular, need to be treated with caution, because each nation has its own group of consensus symbol, not conducive to cross-border communication. We advocate to emphasize the nationalization element symbol in the localization context, and in the context of globalization, it is still necessary to follow the trans-regional and cross-cultural symbol application criterion. Even in the same region of the culture in different periods will also appear to hold symbolic meaning changes.

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