Sign Elements of International Food and Beverage Logos

. This research entitled Sign Element of International Food and Beverage Logos. This research analyses the sign elements of food and beverage logos and the interpretation of the sign. The company want to promote and inform their product by creating the logo. This research applies the semiotic theory by Charles Sanders Peirce to analyse the sign elements and its interpretation in the logos. This research use qualitative descriptive method in analysing the data. The data is 7 food and beverage logos which goes international. Those 7 food and beverage logos are McDonald’s, Starbucks, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, KFC, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi. The data source in this research were logo images that collected from the logo’s official website and Wikipedia. This research will analyse the icon, index, and symbol of the logos as the sign elements by using Peirce’s triadic theory. Then the interpretation of the sign will analyze by relating the representment, object and interpretant. The result of this research shows that there are 6 icons, 5 indexes, and 7 symbols sign used in 7 food and beverage logos. There is 1 logo that has no icon sign, 2 logos have no index sign, and all logos have a symbol sign. The meaning of the sign elements that found in the logos was represented by relating the representment, object, and interpretant.


Introduction
Semiotics is one of linguistic branches which deal with sign and symbol; it is about the relationship between a sign, object and its meaning. Semiotics is everywhere and it is greatly important, because it helps people to realize the meaning or information which not contained in computers, books or codes. Semiotics concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign (Eco, 1976 , p. 7). Simply, semiotics can be said as the study of sign. Sign can be seen in all aspects such as word, image, and sound, which every sign communicate a meaning, but the meaning of sign is arbitrary, it depends to the interpreter. As Peirce (1931 , p. 58) in Chandler (2002) states that anything can be a sign as long as someone interpret it as having meaning.
Human tend to look for meaning to easily understand everything happens around him. The whole thing around is called a sign, which can be expressed using the theory of semiotics.
The development of digital age makes people wants to live uniquely in all life aspects. This era is constantly changing and creating new ways to share and spread messages. The messages itself can be sent by a sign. Human use their creativity and interpretation signs to create a meaning.
Signs is anything that communicate meaning and the meaning of a sign is arbitrary and variable, it can be differently depending to the concept of thinking. A sign can be interpreted by a logo.
Logo is a kind of sign which can easier to convey messages. Logo is one of the most popular and trendy thing nowadays, as logo is the face of what you are going to show the world. Big companies have created a logo in order to get an effective branding for their product. They try to influence the consumer by represent the values of their product.
As pointed out in Merriam-Webster Dictionary logo is a letter or an image which has meaning and usually used as symbol. It is a graphical symbol that used to aid a means of an intuition, food companies, and even a means of country. As a graphical design, logo including a name, symbol, one or more other separate elements to representing, promote, or branding a product. A logo is generally involving color, text, visual and shape. Such as food logos which commonly found today. There are many of food companies can communicate their brand through the logo.
Logos is a Greek word means logic, it appeals to logic and reason. Logos use reasoned and logical arguments to convey point of view and win an audience or customer. Broadly speaking, logos are something that makes your product wide spread, and goes international. People seems to remember the logo of some company because logos are more creative, colorful and powerful in delivering their company's mission so that their product can goes international. In food industries, a good logo is a needs. It such a great way to inform their food, the company can hint the story and history behind the brand. People will eat with their eyes first, it means that presentation such as the use of colors, fonts, and symbols play an important role in the food industry. Rustan (2009) states that logo is not only seen in terms of its physical appearance but also in terms of its meaning. It can be said that the main purpose of logo is to identify, the logo easily conveys the meaning of the brands or the logo works as a symbol sign which has icon to express the information and index to indicate the object with this information pertains. People will remember the iconic, index and symbolic feature of the logo in the same degree.
Food is a primary need, and human beings eat to grow and survive. The food industry is one that expand and develop with good progressive in each year. The food companies have such an effective branding by creating a unique logo for their brands. The food logos play a big role in developing the food companies. Food logos is a tool to identify the food itself, by designing a juicy and recognizable logo, it will give the companies a chance to express their brand, helps customers to understand who they are and what are they offering to the customers.
As semiotics is the theory and study that describes signs and the mechanisms by means of which a sign system produces meaning. The meaning that produced by a sign itself can also carry dual meanings, as well as logo that has direct and indirect meaning, as can be seen in the logo of ice cream brand, "Baskin Robbins" below. Based of the data that taken from the official website of Baskin Robbins company on baskinrobbins.com.sg, the abbreviation, words, and colors are the icon, index, and symbol that found in the logo as the sign elements. As the abbreviation BR that represent their name also known as number 31 that signifies the ice cream flavors that Baskin and Robbins has, the founder of this products wants people to be able to try all the flavor for free by using the pink spoon which inspired the pink color that used in their logo.
Nowadays, a quick-service restaurant or fast food has become a trend. In food business, a great brand will have customers lining up for a taste. To create a brand that triggers customer's appetites, it need to start with well-designed food logo. There are a lot of international fast food and beverage brands that enter Indonesia and people become excited, but not many people are familiar with the logo of the brand itself. Some of them will familiar with the logo but not the meaning. People will recognize those logos because they are noticeable, work to remind people of the great or modern meals they have ate, the color used on the logo can triggers appetite or happiness, and the logo helped to described what the brand was about, what they sell, a burger, chicken, ice cream, and etc. Based on the explanation above, it can be said that the sign elements and its interpretation should be analyse as the problems of the logo by using the semiotic theory to find out the elements of sign; icon, index, and symbol on the international food and beverage logos as it will explain the meaning behind the sign and interpret what is a sign want to tell. The objectives of the study are to find out the elements of sign, and the interpretant of the sign elements in the international food and beverage logos.

Research Method
This research used qualitative descriptive method in the writing process of this research.
Qualitative data usually in the words form rather than numbers, and it is a rich description and explanation of phenomena as it is. Qualitative descriptive study is the method use to find the straight descriptions of phenomena which desired, such study is especially useful to know who, what and where of events (Sandelowski, 2000). This research is to identify the elements of sign and interpret the meaning of sign in the logos, the writer use the theory of Peirce to analysis the data, and qualitative descriptive method is appropriate with this research.    The sign elements that found in the 7 international food and beverage logos are icon, index, and symbol. There are 6 iconic signs, 5 indexes signs, and 7 symbolic signs. There are 1 logo that has no icon in the logo. Then there are 2 logos that have no index, and all logos have symbol.

Results and Discussion
This indicates that the logos of food and beverage company are symbolic, which each logos have or use color for their logo. The food and beverages company prefers to used color as their symbol which is more attractive to represent the identity of the company itself, because they logo can be more colorful and meaningful in order to attract the customer's attention. The color is a symbol that conventionally made by the company for the logo. Those icon sign is missing because there is no iconic object that represent something similarly. The index sign can't be found in two logos as the logos has no verbal text that represent or signify the name of the company itself.        The triadic theory of Peirce used to interpret the meaning of the sign elements by relating the Representament, Object, and Interpretant (ROI). The signs elements in each logos represented the whole meaning of the logos, it represent the brand name, the city, its founder. Based of the analysis, the writer found that in each letter or word that used by the company for their name, each colors used in the logos, and each shapes of every logos show different meaning.
The meaning of the logo can be interpret by connecting the representment, object, and interpretant. The representament that found in the logo is the icon sign, index sign, and symbol sign. The object is the representation of those three sign elements. Then the interpretant is the sense or meaning of the sign elements that found in the logo.

Conclusion
Based on the research finding about the sign elements in food and beverage logos, it can be concluded that the sign elements found in the 7 food and beverage logos are based of the object, they are icon, index and symbol. The icon sign shows the similarity of the object used in the logo, such as the figure of siren, a domino card, a roof, an arrow, a globe and water, and beer mug. The index sign show the identity such the name of the company in the logos, such as the name of McDonald's, Domino's, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Coca-Cola. Then, the symbol sign represents the philosophy of the color used in the logos, which are the used of green color to symbolize a freshness. Red color for tomato sauce and power. Yellow color represent an energy.
Blue color represent a professionalism. White color for hygiene and clean. Orange color represent a warmth. Pink color for a cute and funny.
The dominant sign found in the logo is symbol sign because the logo was created by the company with their own perception and meaning, so the logo is conventionally made by the company, and the meaning of the sign found in the logo is arbitrary.
The meaning of the sign found in the logo by connecting the representment, object, and interpretant. The representment is the sign itself, the object is the representation of the sign that found in the logos, then the interpretant is the meaning of the sign found in the logos