[Sigia-l] is there a word

[George Olsen]

There's probably not a commonly used pre-existing term, outside of academia.

In the building design world there's "environmental signage," but that's
too general. "Symbols" has been used for highway signage.

I don't recall any specific terms from my graphic design days. There's
"iconography," but that's broader, refering to the general usage of logos,
symbols and icons.

Semiotics uses "signs" (See
<http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html>), but semiotics
quickly gets into jargony terms such as "signified" and "signifier." And a
non-academic audience probably won't understand the specific definition of
"signs" used by semiotics.

"Ideogram" is probably the closest to what you're looking for. (See
<http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ideogram&r=67>). So I'd
recommend that.

BTW, are you trying to find a word to refer to the _group_ or to the
concept of icons representing a specific thing?

George



Christina Wodtke said:
> for a set of icons that represent aspects of a thing: like a hotel that
> has
> icons that represent pool, pets welcome, parking or a movie theater that
> has
> icons for handicapped accessible, hearing impaired, parking, etc.