World without Words

A voyage through the visual shorthand of modern life, World Without Words argues that we are relying less on words for navigating the world than on images and graphic devices. It shows designers’ attempts to condense words and data down to their simplest equivalents. The book illustrates the familiar, the peculiar and the confusing visual language that we are asked to interpret (symbols, graphs and charts, maps), mixed up with the more graphic examples of data storage and identification that is read not by humans but by machines (such as barcodes, magnetic strips, holograms). Featuring airport signs, road markings, pictograms, maps, diagrams, packaging, logos and symbols, World Without Words shows not only the norms of wordless graphic communication but also how these vary around the world when interpreted by local individuals for different cultures.