Peirce distinguishes a whole category, the upper one, in his classification of signs as symbols. A symbol is the general name of a description which signifies its object by means of an association of ideas or habitual connection between the name and the character signified.;  (C.P.1.369) A symbol is a representamen * regardless of any similarity with its object and simply because it will be presented to be a representamen. Such as, for example, is any general word, sentence or book. * (C.P. 5.73) Unlike icons and indices, symbols require no semiotically real or presumed natural connection with their material quality to be signs of the objects they represent. (note 2) 
 

The symbol, which is at least partly arbitrary, permits disengagement of the sign from its semiotic object such that it can veer away from customary pathways and begin referring to itself, which in turn frees it up to communicate about communication and actions. Hence it can lead the interpreter toward knowing that explicit inferential process and communication about those processes. It also presents a relatively vast, even well-nigh unique set of possibilities of signification. This characteristic of the symbol reveals, at the outer reaches of semiosis, a trend toward successive abstraction. (note 3)

This symbol is called Binah or Understanding. * The Understanding here indicated is more a higher kind of Faith *. (note .4): it is also said to contain the archetype of the initiated adept, the esoteric grade of which is Master of the Temple, implying a vehicle of the Spirit in manifestation. It is the Sephirot of the Mother of Form. As a geometrical form it can be a potent symbol of the innermost structures of one's being upon which all the rest is built. (note 5) 

The ten types of signs, or levels in peircean semiotics are present as symbols in all design. It is not uncommon to talk about symbols in design products but rarely this observation is based upon analytic research. Superficiality is actually also probable in my own observations. But Peirce can eventually help us out as his sign categories reveal their pertinence also in our field. In his writings he stresses again and again that all signs can be transmuted in other signs on other levels. For Peirce talking about symbols means recognizing symbolic character to all signs on all levels, symbolical, iconic and indexical. This makes it possible to abandon the generalizing attitude of just recognizing a certain symbol in a certain form for a more interesting discussion about levels of symbols. 
Generating symbols on all levels in design products is perhaps the kernel of our profession. Many of these symbols have lost their original meaning in the process of degeneration lamented by Baudrillard. If however we want to talk about esthetics it will be unavoidable to assert that even these symbols have a meaning albeit on an unconscious level. Actually I feel that our esthetic sensibility results from accumulated human history, especially, since the outset of modern civilization, the Neolithic age.