Interaction Design · Project 1 of 3 · Weeks 1–5
GD 1 Project 2 : Symbol System
Reduction, abstraction, and the grammar of visual communication
FORMAT
Individual
WEEKS
3-5
METHODS
Thumbnail sketching (minimum 50) · Symbol reduction · Vector construction · Adobe Illustrator · Pen tool · System logic · Presentation sheet production · Iterative critique
TAGS
Design Education, Design Thinking, Aesthetic Psychology, Semiotics
Why this project
The symbol system asks students to make formal relationships carry meaning — to move from seeing, which the first project trained them to do, to signifying. Semiotics is not an abstract theory in this project. Understanding how images carry cultural meaning, how a mark can be read differently depending on what a viewer brings to it, is what separates symbol design from shape-making. The four subject categories are chosen because they resist literal depiction. You cannot illustrate grief, solidarity, or metamorphosis; you can only find a form that carries them. That constraint forces the kind of reductive thinking that Dondis A. Dondis identifies as the core of visual literacy: not adding until it looks right, but subtracting until only what is essential remains.
The system requirement adds a demand that the individual mark cannot make: that all six belong together. Consistency of stroke weight, corner logic, scale relationships, and spatial proportion across the set is not a stylistic preference — it is evidence of systematic thinking. Rob Roy Kelly argued that students rarely carry learning from one problem to the next — that it tends to stay inside the assignment that produced it. The symbol system is designed to resist that by requiring students to make decisions that apply simultaneously across multiple marks. Ellen Lupton's work on mark-making and visual reduction is a direct influence: the designer's task is not to add but to subtract until only what is essential remains.
The postage stamp format adds a constraint that a generic symbol brief doesn't: the work must be readable at a very small size. That requirement drives every design decision toward simplification. Students who try to illustrate their concept (i.e., to show everything) discover quickly that the stamp doesn't have room for everything. The ones who understand semiotics understand that you don't need to show everything. You need to show enough. The viewer's cultural knowledge does the rest.
The Symbol Game , which is a game I designed specifically for this course, is central to how students develop that understanding. Through gameplay, students practice moving from illustrative representation toward abstracted visual meaning, learning to read and construct signs rather than pictures. The game makes the semiotic shift tangible before students apply it to their own symbol systems.
The cut-paper prototyping step is where that understanding becomes visible in the making. Cutting a symbol from black paper forces students to confront what is actually essential to the form. If you can't cut it cleanly, it's too complex. That physical constraint is a better semiotics teacher than any lecture I could give.
The Brief
PROJECT PROMPT
Design a system of six symbols that share a single visual logic. Each symbol communicates one idea from your chosen subject. Together, the six symbols must feel like they belong to the same family — consistent in weight, geometry, and approach.
A symbol communicates through simplified, non-literal form. It is not an illustration. The test of a symbol is whether it reads clearly at a small size, without labels or explanation. The test of a system is whether its parts belong together.
You will choose one subject from four options: Emotions, Community, Transformation, or Time. All work begins with sketching — a minimum of 20 thumbnails — before any digital construction begins.
DELIVERABLE
Thumbnail sketches (minimum 20) — photographed and submitted
6 final symbols, each built on a consistent grid unit
One presentation sheet per symbol — 6 sheets total
Each sheet: 8.5" × 11" landscape orientation — Each sheet displays the symbol at 1.5" × 1.5" (left) and 4" × 4" (right)
Title block, lower right corner: name, course, semester — Helvetica Neue, 11pt
Adobe Illustrator file (.ai), all vector, black and white only
Export each sheet as PDF, labelled Lastname_Firstname_Project2_Symbol[n].pdf
Print all 6 sheets for critique — Self-assessment — see separate assignment sheet
What I've learned from running this
The original second project in this course asked students to design a personal logo using their own name as the company name. The presentation format remained similar to what I now use—featuring a small and large version displayed for critique. This requirement persisted, but the conceptual foundation changed completely.
The idea of designing a personal logo is reasonable. Students are motivated by their own name; the requirement of two methods highlights the difference between a mark and a logotype; and Illustrator is the appropriate tool. However, I found that this personal connection also limited the scope of their work. Students designed for themselves, judged by their own taste, and struggled to move beyond personal preferences to ask formal questions. Since it’s a logo for a one-person company, there’s no audience to consider. The semiotics were superficial because the brief permitted such simplicity.
Switching from self-reference to abstraction replaces the symbol system. Students who craft six strong individual symbols but fail to make them form a cohesive family haven’t fully grasped the task. The crucial lesson occurs in the gap between understanding individual marks and understanding the system as a whole—a space where valuable critique conversations happen. I often observe students first understanding the single mark, with systemic logic becoming clearer later, often through critique rather than creation. This sequence itself is instructive: designing decisions rarely exist in isolation.
The presentation format—small 1.5 inches and large 4 inches on a landscape sheet, with the small on the left and large on the right—is carried over deliberately from earlier work. It helps students develop an evaluation standard: does the mark remain clear at small scale? A mark that loses clarity at 1.5 inches isn’t fully resolved. This question, introduced here, becomes a guiding criterion for all future projects.