Urban Icons: Symbolic Function and Visual Strategy in City Branding From the Perspective of Charles Morris’s Semiotics

With the rapid advancement of urbanization and increasing intercity competition, urban brand image design has become a crucial strategy for enhancing a city's competitiveness and cultural influence. This study grounded in Charles Morris's semiotic model, employs the analytical framework of syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics to explore the symbolic functions and visual communication strategies in urban brand image design. Through a comparative analysis of representative domestic and international city cases,combined with literature review and case study methods, The study finds that, at the syntactic level, the recognizability of city visual identities can be enhanced through the systematic integration of visual elements; at the semantic level, the intrinsic meanings of cultural symbols should be deeply explored to convey the unique value of a city; and at the pragmatic level, multi-media communication strategies are essential to strengthening brand influence. Based on these insights, this research proposes strategies such as symbolic form optimization, cultural connotation articulation, and context-adaptive dissemination, offering both theoretical and practical guidance for city brand identity design.