We often assume that visuals like icons, emojis and symbols are universal. A white flag means “peace”. A pill icon means “medicine”. But are these really intuitive or are we just familiar with them through repeated exposure, over years, decades, even centuries? This article attempts to separate visuals that are genuinely intuitive and those that merely have the illusion of it.

Are Universal Symbols a Myth?

We tend to confuse frequent exposure with inherent meaning. Many health and safety systems of communication depend on icons, but they are also culturally bound in the sense that they are interpreted differently according to cultural setting. A red cross might mean health in some countries, but have military, war or religious overtones in others. A tick/check icon ✔️might mean “correct” in one region and “incorrect” in others.

In short, symbols are designed for clarity, but clarity is the product of shared context.

A Time Traveller’s Test

Imagine a time traveller from 400 years ago suddenly arriving in our world. Let’s say that this person was born and spent their entire life in exactly the same place where you are now, but suddenly, somehow, arrives in your town in 2025. They see a red sign with a circle with a line through it. Would they grasp what it means? Most likely not. It would be bewildering. Such a sign feels intuitive and taken for granted to us. But this is only because we have been taught – through driving, schooling, repetition and design standards and conventions. It would be the same for us: if we suddenly found ourselves 400 years in the past, we would see signs and icons that may make no sense to us. This is just a thought experiment in visual cultural conditioning. What we think is obvious is often just familiar.

The White Flag of Peace

You do not have to conjure up thought experiments to gain an insight into this. We can draw from the real world. In 1981, when the ship the MV Primrose ran aground off the coast of North Sentinel Island, a team of salvagers from nearby South Andaman Island was sent to dismantle the shipwreck. The North Sentinelese, one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes, responded to their presence by firing arrows from the beach. In return, the team raised a white sheet to signal peace, hoping the North Sentinelese would understand the team posed no hostility.

The flag failed. The Sentinelese did not recognise it as a symbol of surrender or safety. To them, it was just a piece of cloth, meaningless. They may have even understood it as something threatening. They might have their own cultural associations with ‘white’ which, given the isolation, are not likely to coincide with associations elsewhere. Do they even culturally ‘see’ white? The salvagers assumed it would be understood because white = peace and this is universal. But it was not universal; it is a cultural invention that spread through military tradition, international law and portrayal in the media. What kept the team safe was firing a gun into the air. This caused the arrows to stop.

The salvage team was on-site for a few months and the North Sentinelese were tolerant of their presence. It suggests that, rather than the white sheet, other semiotics that the islanders picked up on were the non-threatening demeanour, gestures and physical distance that led to a kind of mutual understanding. It could be that the white flag acquired meaning in that specific context: a newly learned symbol of non-aggression, taught not through education, but through consistent, peaceful action.

So, the white flag may not have been inherently intuitive, but it might have become meaningful. Visuals can be learned in context, especially when paired with behaviour, consistency and repetition.

As a sidebar, after the wreck, the North Sentinelese began using iron, repurposed from the shipwreck, for tools and weapons. The salvage team indirectly ushered in an iron age. While the meaning of the white flag fell (maybe initially) flat, iron did not. Why? Because materials are universal; symbols are not. Fire = burn; blood = harm; metals = cut. This is instinctive, whereas a piece of cloth on a stick is not.

Learning to Question the “Obvious”

If we want to communicate clearly, especially in health, safety or cross-cultural design, we must stop assuming our symbols are self-evident. Even a symbol, like the white flag that we think is universal, can fail. The goal should be to design with learnability in mind, never mistaking the familiar for the universal.

Thank you for reading,

Mark Gibson

Leeds, United Kingdom, April 2025