Pictograms are components of the visual language systems of ancient cultures in Egypt and Mesoamerica as well as in modern pictorial statistics and applications of the Unicode system in our computerized present. The term “pictogram” or “pictograph” (from Latin pictum “painted”, “picture” and ancient Greek γράφειν gráphein, English “to write”) indicates that the icon and the symbol are conjoined and function together. The paper looks at different applications of pictograms and explores their relationship to and understanding as image schemas. Starting with the Isotype, a pictorial-static method developed by Otto Neurath, and taking into account its artistic origin and specific production process, it is shown that pictograms such as the Isotype integrate not only icon and symbol, but also the indexical sign. This is not only of fundamental importance with regard to the question of the power associated with the increasing organizational abstraction of pictograms through textual logics, but also the strongest connection can be made here to image schema that are based on the sensorimotor experiences of the body with the environment. The value of the indexical sign is important precisely because it is diametrically opposed to coding. Thus, the analysis of the states of the sign, drawing on the semiotics of de Saussure and Peirce, aims to examine the phenomenon of formal to technical reduction in greater detail. To this end, the reference to hieroglyphic writing (which Neurath himself did), to the Huexotzinco Codex, and finally to the application of Unicode pictograms will be discussed. The work of artist Marcel Schwittlick will be discussed as an example of how coded Unicode pictograms are used as a reference for exploring new means of machine-based artistic practice.