History

A Very Brief History of Signs & Design (VBHoSD)

(This is comedic and not to be taken seriously, we're not into banging on about our company, we are more concerned with yours)

A sign is an entity, which signifies another entity. Depending on how far you want to go back in the history of signs and how you wish to define your sign, it could be postulated that the "Big Bang" event was the first "sign" that could be used as a benchmark for the history. Since signs are constantly being created, used and sometimes recycled, it would be best to add an end to the VBHoSD.

A Few Very Early Signage Milestones - the aforementioned "Big Bang"; the coalescence of molten material in to a spheroid, which would be known as the third rock from the sun; the first extraterrestrial collision which created the moon, an ocean and the all important earth's axis tilt of 23 and a half degrees that creates the conditions for the support of all life; the original lightening strike into the primordial soup of the oceans that sparked life; the first division of a cell that led to asexual and sexual reproduction; the first movement of a water based creature onto land that led to land colonisation; the oldest recorded cave painting (possibly 32,000 years old); the oldest recording of a writing system (3500 years before common era [BCE]) - the list could go on but what are the types of sign?

A Brief Sojourn In Semiotics. Semiotics is the basic unit of meaning whether it is in the gesture, image, taste, texture, scent, sound or word. There are two philosophical schools of thought that signs either have two (dyadic - the signifier and the signified - Saussure 1857 - 1913) or three (triadic - the object, the signifier and the decoding of the sign, which is further subdivided into three minor classes [the immediative meaning, the meaning actually produced by the sign and the meaning that would be produced if the sign were correctly understood - Charles Peirce 1839 - 1914) parts. The sender of the message, the sign designer, must be familiar with the current language, codes and its culture if he or she is going to create effective signs that warn, inform, advise or instruct.