Semiotics in SARP

[Luca]

I was trawling through the web as I usually do, and I came across this picture, from Alien and I fell in love with it for perhaps irrational reasons:



What are these symbols? These are meant to be a starship's legend and key, for, and I quote: "all commercial trans-stellar and heavy element transport craft. April 2078." as designed by Rob Cobb. You can see his colour keys down below.

If you can't read it in the picture:

Red: Viable, sound, alive, alertness.
White/Grey: Life supporting condition, pressure, temperature.
Black: Vacuum, death, hazard.
Yellow/Orange: Harmful active process. Molecular (heat), atomic, chemical.
Blue: Lowered thermal condition.
Green: Non-human biological substance/process (Not used in standard)

It's intended to be a handy guide to what to expect when you walk around on a ship, or look at a door to know what's behind it, or to tell you where the coffee is.


(very important stuff here, folks. Do you know where the coffee is on your ship?)

Just now, I found a vectorised version of it.



So, with this in mind, does SARP have anything like this that can be universally understood by all? Are warnings printed in the shipwright's native language and people who don't speak the language expected to translate it on the fly?

The topic fascinates me because this is all about communicating clear information quickly, and that's what I enjoyed doing when I did games design. Like, I wonder what this symbol looks like in Yamatai?


(It's supposed to have a white background)

We all know what it means just by looking at it, which is the beauty of images, but would Yamatai do things differently? Would the Nepleslians even have them? Would the Lorath use a different set of glyphs altogether?

Discuss.

EDIT:

For more on Alien's visual design, look here: http://typesetinthefuture.com/alien/

 

[Gunsight1]

This is ainteresting question. I've always liked the semiotic standard in alien. It looks cool ans makes a lot of sense for quickly ID'ng what a room or door or whatever is for at a quick glance rather than having to read a word or paragraph description.

I'd think there would be something, you see this stuff in the world today, ie the signs on bathrooms for example

 

[Lamb]

 

[Nashoba]

I can see there being a set for the cultures that were once Yamatai, Elysia, Nepleslia and Yamatai. But the other factions would have their own. You can not expect the other factions to use the same. After all, Freespacers, the radiation signs would not be warnings.

 

[Gunsight1]

Hehehe

 

[Edto Xar'Sivaree]

It would also probably change depending on language and communication styles. Vekimen write out soundwaves as their writen text, given they can identify sounds to such a specific level. They can feel how they vibrate on all sorts of frequencies. They have different symbols to go before a phrase to indicate octave and speed, which could change the mood and over all message respectively. They have no octave for humor, but an odd Accent mark that goes over the line if its supposed to be a joke ad what have you.

In my first description of a Vekimen ship, I made note that there were symbols that looked like soundwaves over the doors. Obviously everyone's favorite I'ee Ambassador wouldn't be able to read what they meant, but they were an indication of where the four tubes lead too. Quarters, maintenance, cockit, and Cargo. Given the entire ship was a bit of a maze, you could go down any of the four and wind up in any of the locations, but the Vekimen see it as "Take the most direct route you can, and you will get here" which Edtoto explained to Ingrid when they were examining the same ship outside the Vekimen Station.

Symbols would be more universal, and if the Vekimen start having members of other factions on their ships then they may start adopting similar symbol, similar to how WHIMIS works.