Visual Identities Author:Jean-Marie Floch The six essays in Visual Identities are an important contribution to the growing field of industrial semiotics. Until recently there have been quite different and distinct ways of understanding commercial signs (e.g. logos, advertisements). Industry-level work has tended to look at questions of marketing and has often been reduced to mass psycho... more »logy of "appeal" and poor audience research. At the same time the textual analysis of commercial signs has tended to be launched from several limited positions of identity politics and criticism (e.g. Marxism, feminism). Looking at Waterman pens, IBM and Apple logos, and Chanel's "Total Look," Floch manages to find a way between and outside these traditions. In doing so he has produced a book that will interest industrial practitioners in advertising, marketing, and design as well as students and academics in the field of linguistics.« less