Free Transcript of Episode 2.16 A NOSY SEMIOTIC HACK! Improves Your Designing and Illustrating Skills
Semiosis 101 Season 2, Video 16 Transcript
Hello readers.
In this free transcript for the video published on Semiosis 101 on 23 Aug 2023, we now explore how the four existential states of be-ing can offer valuable insights into a target audience’s socio-cultural experiences. The main focus is on how to visually hack your audience’s lived experiences to enhance your visual communication skills.
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.
Welcome to Semiosis 101 season two’s sixteenth semiotic video.
If you have watched Semiosis 101 video before then you will already know I am Dave Wood.
Season two’s semiotic theme is a Semiotic Rosetta Stone, which is a metaphor to the unlocking and designer-centric translation of Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic theory of Semiosis - sign-action.
Why do you need Semiosis 101?
Peirce’s writing and terminology is very …obtuse.
Following on from last week’s video which introduced abductive reasoning - the logic of design - this week I will be focusing in on how to visually hack your audience’s lived experiences to enhance your visual communication skills.
The logic of design uses hypothesis to draw conclusions about the socio-cultural lived experiences, in order to provide insights to semiotically encode visual language to appeal to that audience.
Hit subscribe and I will explain…
In recent videos we have already explored the basics of hypothesis and abductive reasoning. We have seen the real potential of hypothesis during the ideation phase, as it logically focuses only on “what is the best answer - for now!”
Floyd Merrell in his book Signs Grow: Semiosis and Life Processes states, “Abductive acts reveal mind at its best, not that of reason, logic, intellect, control (…) but that of sentiment, intuition, gut feeling, which are all in classical jargon closer to the heart than to the mind.” (p216)
Yes, those awkward, unrigorous, non-scientific, woolly qualitative things that are neither logical quantifiable scientific proofs (inductive reasoning), nor verifiable truths (deductive reasoning).
This partly why Nigel Cross calls abductive reasoning the logic of design, as design and illustration use the qualitative to engage the mind.
This places this discussion firmly in the phenomenological realm of the audience’s lived (qualitative) experiences, where “gut instinct” is an important factor in audience visual reception to designs and illustrations.
Peirce’s Semiosis is firmly rooted in this phenomenological realm. We have already explored his three phenomenological states of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness across many Semiosis 101 episodes so far - check out the archive. The semiotic sign-action begins in a state of Firstness, only if it is perceived by the audience.
In this video’s opening (and in recent videos) I alluded to four existential states we exist in. These states are: lived space/time/body and human relationships. They come from Max van Manen’s other excellent book Researching Lived Experience.
This phenomenological realm of understanding affords meaning to emerge from what has already been experienced.
So in this week’s video we will now explore how these four existential states of be-ing can offer valuable insights into a target audience’s socio-cultural experiences.
These insights can then be semiotically “hacked” by designers and illustrators during ideation, by crafting the Iconic representation level to resemble and align with familiar visual qualities the audience will connect with.
Where can these audience insights come from?
How much of a research budget and time will we need to invest to gain these audience insights?
Do not panic.
Hypothesis is free.
Much like this advice.
I have previously used a “cinema-going” audience example on how to apply abductive reasoning to gain insights to begin your ideation phase, and how at a semiotic Iconic representation level of idea generation, familiar qualities to hook and retain audience attention can be made.
Let us repeat that thought exercise again with a different example, and by using the four existential lenses of lived space, lived time, lived body and lived human experiences. (Remember we are not interested in secondary or tertiary audiences, just the primary audience).
We will now take a target audience from actual design briefs from D&AD 2020’s New Blood Awards. In each brief, D&AD’s design agency partners specify their chosen brand’s primary target audience under the brief heading Who are we talking to? (If your client has not specified this, then ask. If they have, then you will have more detail in the brief).
From this target audience pen portrait we will see how Semiosis and abductive thinking can help a creative to develop a working hypothesis.
Out of the tutor pack of briefs I have shortlisted four target audiences from four brands’ 2020 briefs. They are: Audible’s “Leisure Upgraders,” HSBC’s “Airport Visitors,” Intel’s “Overwhelmed,”and VBAT’s “Bike Hirers”
In this week’s video we will only use one brief (so I will use the other target audiences in the last few videos of Semiosis 101 season 2). So as randomly as I can, I have selected “Bike Hirers” for this exercise. And will cover the other three in future season 2 videos - so subscribe and come back to catch them.
Okay. Who are VBAT’s primary target audience?
If we look at VBAT’s brief written with brand agency SuperUnion the client’s ask from the creative is to “(Re)Imagine the identity of a local bike hire scheme in a city of your choosing.”
In the next section of the brief VBAT/SuperUnion specify…
Who are we talking to?
Tourists and locals, the possibilities are endless. Your identity should seek to inspire a wealth of people to take up cycle hire in your chosen city. From encouraging locals that cycling to work is more fun, to promoting all your chosen city has to offer on the saddle to someone who has never been there before.
“The possibilities are endless.”
Okay. We have already established creatives cannot visually communicate a specific concept to EVERYONE, so how can hypothesis (abductive reasoning - the logic of design) and Semiosis help the creative here to target a primary audience?
Through the existential lens we are taking in this video, let us look at tourists/locals in lived space/time/body/human experience contexts.
A tourist is only a local person in someone else’s locality. They are still cognitive human beings and not aliens. Socio-cultural contexts will be different, language may be different, currency may be different, the locale may be unfamiliar to them and the liminal spaces of their everyday actions may differ (e.g. traffic direction) to their existing experience, BUT there are constants in bike hire.
The audience, whether local or a tourist, do not have a bike to use and that bike will (hopefully) have two wheels, pedals, brakes, etc..
Our target audience, at this moment is unknown to us, but let us begin a working hypothesis of who they are through our existential lived experience lenses. This way we can see familiar qualities emerge that can become semiotic hooks to enhance the visual communication.
Let us commit to a primary target audience. Let us focus on local bike hire. I will keep this a general example of the principal, rather than select a particular city/country. (After all, the idea here is to explain Semiosis and abductive reasoning and not actually complete the brief!)
Remember, as a working hypothesis we want to kick-start the ideation phase quickly from gained insights. This means revealing qualities that can be visualised through semiotic Iconic representations, crafting things that are familiar, and that resemble things already experienced
So what insights can we gain from considering local resident’s lived experiences as a working hypothesis?
Well, initially we can say the target audience will be knowledgeable of their local streets, the traffic directions, the geography of the area, etc. (lived space).
Locals will have more understanding of local traffic conditions they will cycle through, during different periods of the day (lived time). They will individually know their own fitness levels, and the size of bike they need (lived body). The last immediate initial insight in the context of bike hire is that they individually have past experiences of financial transactions (lived human experience).
So far, none of this is ground-breaking is it?
That is the point. It does not have to be arcane and mysterious. The logic of design starts from the known and reveals the unknown. This unknown, through applying abductive reasoning, leads the creative to the best possible explanation - for now. The ideation phase is the period of “daring to fail” where creative solutions can be tested - where semiotic Iconic representation can be crafted.
To end this sixteenth season two video, we can conclude that insights into our target audience can be made - quickly. The four existential states of an audience - space/time/body/human experience lived space offer creatives four lenses to view any potential audience.
Firstly, the primary audience’s lived experiences offer creatives exponential clues on how to semiotically attract and retain their attention. (The example brief’s first sentence did state, “the possibilities are endless.”)
Secondly, with abductive thinking, those possibilities as to whom our audience are has just got more focused. This existential focus can now lead to revealing experiential qualities of familiar things, or things which (in the context of visually communicating to that audience) resemble visual qualities the audience already have experience of.
Come back next week to semiotically ‘wear an experience’ from a hypothesis.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…