At its most fundamental, “drawing for design is deeply involved in the creation and
interpretation of signs as symbols,” (Ashwin 1984, p 44). Cuff (1980) referred to “three distinguishable, yet interdependent and interactive systems that are tacitly at work in all design drawings: representation, communication, and visual appeal,” (p9). These functions were of
42 language and… visual language… a certain set of marks on a field can play back into one's mind and consequently bring forth further elaboration,” (p6).
Ashwin (1984) described verbal communication as a discursive system, pictorial
communication as presentational. In both instances, “the process requires two participants,
an emitter and a receiver.” (p43). He described the diffence in the way the two systems
were understood:
“in verbal language, individual signs (words) are combined in a linear sequence that permits analysis in terms of both the meaning of each sign and its position within the syntax of the sequence… Pictorial communication usually presents interpreters with manifold ensembles of signs rather than sequences, and the interpreters must make their own order of the presentation,” (Ashwin 1984, p52).
Fish & Scrivener (1990) described how pictorial systems functioned:
“sketches use abbreviated two dimensional sign systems to represent three-dimensional visual experience… in two ways. First, lines used in drawing have a variety of
descriptive meanings. Second, sketches are depictive… they provoke visual experience resembling that associated with the object… represented,” (p118).
Plimmer & Apperley (2002) observed that “the range of symbols that is used in sketches and
diagrams is generally quite small: rectangles and ovals of different dimensions and orientation, straight, curved and squiggly lines,” (p10). These constitute glyphs: “a single symbol or a combination of symbols… each discipline developing a unique set of meaningful glyphs,” (ibid).
Fish & Scrivener (1990) and van der Lugt (2005) described the sketch as depictive language: “depictive representations refer to specific objects, rather than classes of
information...These symbol systems are concrete and spatially specific…For instance, a picture of a rocking chair contains the topological information of that object,” (van der Lugt 2005,
p105). Tversky (2002) identifed similarities between the sketch, (depiction) and spoken language, (description) at two levels - “at an abstract level, in the very existence of
segmentation and combination, and at the level of content of a particular domain,” (p151): the
43 infinite number of drawings, (this) is similar to… language,” (Tversky 1999, p4)
Tversky (2002), noted a particular benefit of the sketch: “expressing ideas in a visuospatial
medium makes comprehension and inference easier than in a more abstract medium such as language,” (p148). Additionally, the sketch could offer:
“some of the structure of spoken language… sketches convey figural and relational properties directly, facilitating memory, inference, and discovery… Unseen information, such as motion, can also be inferred from sketches,” (p150).
This is noted by Lambert & Firth (2006), but in a much wider context: “the sketch can
transcend language in terms of the ability to convey relatively complex ideas quickly….sketching is an international language,” (p2).
Barthes (1967) structuralist approach to the study of language, (and based on the earlier work of Saussure and Pierce), like empiricism, relied upon humans defining and understanding the world via the senses: “the way we interpret the world and the
characteristics we bestow upon it are ordered or structured by the way we interpret incoming data,” (Howell 2013, p101). He defined the idiolect, a language personal to the
individual, rather than that used to communicate with others – this related to the pictorial system used by the designer during ideation. He also identified the plane of
content, defined as abstract information related to concepts (the idea), and the plane of expression - the method of realising conceptual information, (the sketch). The
combination of these resulted in the relationship between places, or in terms of design activity, the designer’s plane of reference, being composed of the language of the discipline, personal experience, and the effects of Gestaltising.
The signs utilised by pictorial systems (i.e.; the sketch), are typical of all sign systems. These are based upon denotation, the most apparent and readily understood meaning, and connotation: the meaning a sign may have for an individual – which can be highly subjective, (Ashwin 1984). Ashwin (1984) cited the work of Peirce (1903), positing a trichotomy of sign – all of which can be observed within the sketch: an “index,” the sign being a result of the entity it signifies, the “icon,” where the sign resembles the entity it
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signifies, and the “symbol,” where the sign bears no relationship to the entity it
signifies, but is related to it according to a set of agreed rules. An additional, “indexical
quality,” of the sketch was also considered by Ashwin (1984) - where marks and shapes
created by the designer’s motor activity are evident in a pictorial image: “in the most
deliberate and controlled drawings there subsists an indexical element that cannot be explained in iconic or symbolic terms,” (p45).
Considering the interpretation of signs within the sketch, Ashwin (1984) identified three levels of meaning. He described a “monosemic” system, the sign understood to have only one meaning. A “polysemic” system offered more than one possible meaning, and the “pansemic” system provided an unlimited number of possibilities for
interpretation; the sketch, capable of conveying signs from any one of these systems.