The signs below represent male and human females in almost no way, and yet we all recognise that they designate male and female toilets. This is because we all have a high level of visual literacy.
The warning sign below gives instructions on how to use a certain type of medicine. We know from the symbols that it's a medicine for adults to take 2 pills with water every morning, evening and night, and that it must be kept away from children and toddlers. We know this without reading any words at all.
The crosses below are fundamentally the same shape, but their meanings are all very different. Some refer to religion or mathematics, some look like assistance or first aid markers, and some represent whole countries. All that's changed is the colour or the dimensions. Images can be made to form part of our language - things that stand for something else.
The gender symbols here confuse us because the Mars symbol is pink and the Venus symbol is blue. We generally tend to associate the colour pink with females and the colour blue with males, so it's an inconsistency to see the two contrasting like that.
Visual Semiotics
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