Semiotics for Product Design Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards based on lecture notes about semiotics for product design.

Semiotics

The study of signs and how meaning is created.

Sign

Everything that represents something else.

Ferdinand de Saussure

A Swiss linguist who called the study of signs semiology and believed a sign has two parts.

Signifiant

The signifier; the form; the outward or material aspect of a sign.

Signifié

The signified; the concept; the mental concept of a sign.

Charles Sanders Peirce

An American philosopher who developed a different model of signs, calling it semiotics, consisting of three components.

Representamen

The sign; what is observed.

Object

What the sign refers to; something absent or intangible.

Interpretant

The mental image or meaning constructed by the observer.

Icons

Resemble what they represent.

Index

Have a direct, causal relationship.

Symbols

Arbitrary and culturally determined.