Free Transcript of Episode 2.14 Audience Hypothesis: What Will Semiotically Hook Attention?
Semiosis 101 Season 2, Video 14 Transcript
Hello readers.
In this free transcript for the video published on Semiosis 101 on 2 Aug 2023, we semiotically go deeper into the conceptual darkness of ideation, in order to hook our audience’s attention. How will we do this? Well, let us begin with a working hypothesis.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…
…and here is the video’s transcript.
NOTE: As with any video transcript the tone used is conversational. The following transcript text features ad libs, and therefore should be read in the spirit of any semi-scripted video.
We have discussed audience attention a lot in this season of Semiosis 101. We have pretty much danced around how hooking and maintaining that attention can semiotically be achieved. We have examined how, within Peirce’s semiotic theory, the triadic interconnection between a Concept and its Representation is dependent upon the Interpreter.
We have used a Visual Communication Design macro analogue for this in the form of the Client and Creative, and their target Audience. We have seen how semiotic sign-action (Semiosis) cannot even begin to work if the Audience does not perceive the semiotic sign at all. So, how do we as visual communicators get semiotic sign-action to begin to visually hook attention? Well, in Semiosis the action cannot even begin until something is INTERPRETED as some thing.
Who interprets? The target audience does this.
Who is responsible for the visual communication? Yup. The illustrator or designer.
What do they visually communicate? What the client needs from the set brief.
How do they do this? Obviously, within their disciplines, the visual communicators’ craft outcomes that (through manipulating type and image in different proportions) convey this to the audience. Peirce refers to this communicational situation as a determination flow between an Object, through its Representamen, to an Interpretent, revealing the Object.
In Semiosis 101 designer-centric terms, on a macro level, this means a determination flow between the Client’s Concept(s), through how the Creative crafts the Concept(s)’ Representation, to an Interpretation by the target audience, who connotatively arrive at an understanding of the Client’s Concept(s). Simply put, Semiosis helps Creatives’ to effectively visually communicate more dynamically.
Why this complexity? Surely, the Creative just designs and/or illustrates what is in the brief and the audience just accepts it? We all know, as fellow humans, life is not that simple.
In a previous video we have already explored why the “Buy Beans!” approach is a dead end in visual communication. Remember, in Semiosis 101 we are focused on deeper communication beyond a mere denotational level. In that deeper level of visual communication both the Creative and Audience have to work harder in the communication. Why? We have already in Semiosis 101 unpacked “visual noise” which Hall discusses in his excellent book.
But for those of you just joining us, here is a thought experiment.
Wherever you are watching this video… whatever time of day… try to think back and remember…
How many pieces of visual communication have you seen today?
What do I mean?
Think about every single thing in your lived experience today that has an image on it, has type on it, has image and type on it. This could be packaging, tins, posters, signs, newspapers, etc. etc. Can you count them all? Do you remember them all? Of course not. That is the visual noise we talk of. Too many pieces of visual communication vying for an audience’s attention. How can a Creative compete against that visual noise? Well firstly, remember, we are not designing for EVERYONE’s attention. We have a primary Audience the Client wishes to connect with to enact an ‘action’ of some kind from what a Creative creates.
What connects the Client’s communicational need with the intended target Audience? That is where a working hypothesis of the Audience’s shared experience can provide the Creative with insights on how to visually hook their attention. The basic building blocks of visual communication, whether illustration or typographic are lines, shapes, colours, weights of strokes, negative and positive space, etc.
These basic visual communication building blocks within Peircean semiotics are potentially Iconic representation. Let us think about this and how this relates to the Audience, and gives an insight into how to Iconically encode semiotic hooks to trigger their interpretation.
Last week I used an example context of a Client’s target Audience as “cinema-goers.”The working hypothesis to begin ideation to trigger the Audience’s interest, played on visually communicating “darkness” in a context of the visual aesthetic, evoking a familiarity to/a resemblance of the quality of light in a screening. When I say “darkness” I am obviously not meaning everything is visually BLACK. That would make no sense.
Iconic representation is about qualities, resemblances, familiarities to things that the audience already have experience of. Even if it is only subconsciously. So, in the working hypothesis example of “darkness” as a visual quality to manipulate, to begin to tickle the perception of the audience into taking the visual bait, the hypothesis (abductive reasoning) is that a cinema-going target audience feels comfortable with the sense of cinematic darkness.
As abductive reasoning logically is not concerned with fact (deductive reasoning) or scientific proof (inductive reasoning), but with the best possible explanation, the hypothesis of enjoying being in the dark is the starting point. From this hypothesis, creatives can visually lay the semiotic signs as bait to hook attention. From a visual language perspective, a creative can now begin to visually explore during ideation, sketched ideas playing around with qualities of cinematic darkness.
In this exploration of Iconic representation of darkness the creative can play with colour tones (Iconic), transitions from light to dark (Iconic), silhouettes of dark human heads/seat backs (yes, Iconic), etc. Why? The client’s brief may not have anything to do with cinemas, just a cinema-going target audience?
That is true.
This example of using a working hypothesis (abductive reasoning) to semiotically connect suitable visual language with the target audience, is just a quick example to find an attention-grabbing aesthetic. So, by visually playing with the qualities of darkness as Iconic resemblances, creatives can cut through the visual noise to trigger subconscious recognition in the target audience with something they are familiar with. The trick is to trust the ideation process, and a working hypothesis, to help gain working insights toward a subconscious triggering of recognition of familiar qualities.
As creatives, this is just your semiotic Trojan Horse. It is a communicational short-cut that once attention is hooked, the sign-action can then begin to work. The semiotic power is not to just encode, but to interpret meaning. This meaning is by its very semiotic nature, connotatively conveyed. It is meaning that emerges from interpretation, at differing levels of audience involvement. In these videos I have used an example of an image of a panda, that is at the same time just shapes and lines, a drawing of an animal, an actual panda, and a logo.
Whichever level you perceive at depends on your personal experience, cultural contexts and frames of reference. If you only see shapes, the sign-action has not been triggered. If you perceive the shapes as something, semiotically the sign-action has been triggered.
If you perceive the shapes as an animal of some sort, Iconically the meaning has begun to work as you recognise qualities to something that is familiar. You have in your lived experience recognition of what is being represented is animal-shaped.
If you perceive the animal-shape as a panda, Iconically the qualities point you to Indexically make the connection to an existent thing you know.
If you know what logos are, and one thing can Symbolically be agreed to mean something else, then you will know that as a logo it is no longer merely a panda.
In the same way, our example of darkness works on different semiotic levels.
To end this fourteenth season two video we can conclude, that in my example of a working hypothesis of using the quality of darkness to a cinema-going target audience, is a visual Trojan Horse to semiotically hook attention, to then communicate what needs to be visually communicated.
Firstly, darkness is just a quality that can be utilised as a short-cut with the desired target audience. It is nothing more than a semiotically encoded visual Representation, to move the Interpretation to the actual desired Concept.
Secondly, using logic in the form of abductive reasoning can have positive (and free) impacts on your ideation. As a working hypothesis is neither fact nor a scientific proof, it affords the creative opportunities to craft effective visual hooks.
Next week we move Semiosis 101 on to the audience.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…