The following paper assesses the roles played by semiotics in graphic design and in graphic design education, which both reflects and shapes practice. It identifies a series of factors; graphic design education methods and culture; semiotic theories themselves and their application to graphic design; the two wings of Peircian semiotics and Saussurian semiology and their incompatibilities; semiology's linguocentrism, its affinity to cultural criticism and its seminal role in cultural and social anthropology, structuralism, poststructuralism and deconstruction. It examines the uses and criticisms of semiotics and semiology in design, their use in graphic design education, and their operationalization within technical communication and human factors as paths that might be applied to graphic design. (Contains 5 figures.)