The ‘Pictograms, Signs of Life, Emojis: The Society of Signs’ catalogue explores the questions: What objectives, and hopes are linked to the development of the modern language of images, including emojis? To which issues of their time are they each reacting to? Do they expand our possibilities of expression, or do they limit them by defining stereotypes?

The focus of this catalogue is on lexicons and systems of pictorial signs devised by designers and artists like Gerd Arntz, Marie and Otto Neurath, Otl Aicher, Yukio Ōta or Wolfgang Schmidt and others.

How functional or engaging do the designers consider their pictorial signs to be? Are they interested in universal forms of communication or personal spaces of retreat, rapid transmission of information or complex or poetic forms of language, abstraction or individualisation?

Accompanies the exhibition of the same name, co-produced and exhibited at both Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren and Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg.

English and German text.