Abstract The purpose of this paper is, first, to present a systematic cognitive type theory, which we believe can provide a better explanation of the semantic work of iconic signs than the iconic type theory proposed by Groupe μ (1992). The second objective is to present Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and to show its limitations in accounting for visual metaphoric phenomena. We suggest those constraints can be corrected with the cognitive type model. At the end, we attempt to illustrate how the cognitive type notion can explain visual metaphoric phenomena, taking into account the main aspects of CMT.