A Photographic Essay of Signs in their Environment:

In this visual essay I aim to highlight and discuss the information given to us by signs, using my own photography to give visual examples. In addition to distinguishing the different genres of signs I aim to deconstruct the signs using semiotics.* I am aware that the term sign, can be taken very broadly, so to avoid confusion I will be using the following three definitions:

A: A display used to identify or advertise a place of business or a product.

B: A posted command, warning or direction.

C: A public display of a message.

These definitions form the three sections of this visual essay, A, B and C.

*Semiotics is the theory, which we apply to graphic design and visual communication, proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in the early 1900’s. Saussure’s theory was that a sign was produced when two elements came together, the ‘Signifier’ and the ‘Signified’. “A word became known as a signifier and the object it represented became the signified.” Another key semiotic concept I will be referring to in this essay is ‘Noise’. Noise is “the interference” between the message of the sign and the receiver of the sign.


Click on each thumbnail to open each folder of photographs.