Visual Symbols and Information Communication in Linguistic Landscape: A Case Study of Shougang Park
Within linguistic landscapes, visual symbols serve as a principal medium for conveying meaning, yet their communicative effectiveness largely depends on observable design properties. Focusing on Shougang Park—a decommissioned Beijing steelworks repurposed as an industrial-heritage site—this study investigates the visual components of on-site signage and their communicative effectiveness. Drawing on Backhaus’s sign-survey procedure with photographic documentation, we coded 154 signs across six dimensions: typeface legibility, layout rationality, icon configuration, color application, image–text relations, and visual symbol standardization. An audience perception survey supplemented the analysis. The overall visual design proves acceptable, yet the analysis identifies four problems: a low icon configuration rate, a relatively high visual-symbol problem rate, suboptimal image–text relations, and inconsistent color clarity. Some visual-symbol designs have furthermore not effectively responded to the spatial character of the industrial heritage. On this basis, the study proposes optimization principles and specific measures, offering a theoretical and practical reference for visual communication design at industrial-heritage spaces.
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