ABSTRACT
You are quite likely to have encountered the word ‘semantics’ in a phrase going something like, ‘Oh, that’s just semantics …’, where the speaker indicates that some matter is of trifling importance, that hairs are being split or that the real issue is being avoided. If so, you have encountered an idiot, as well as the word ‘semantics’. Semantics has to do with meaning and signification and, as meaning and signification are the most important things human beings or graphic designers ever involve themselves with, semantics is neither trifling nor hair-splitting nor issue-avoiding. The word semantics comes to us from an ancient Greek word that meant ‘to show’ or ‘to signify’. The alignment of the visual (in ‘show’) and the meaningful (in ‘signify’) is not merely a happy accident; it illustrates the centrality of graphic design to the production and reproduction of meanings in human life.
