Free Transcript of Episode 2.2 Ideation Vs Autopsy: How Applied Semiotics Can Proactively Enhance Visual Communicating
Semiosis 101 Season 2, Video 2 Transcript
Hello readers.
In this free transcript for the video published on Semiosis 101 on 19 Apr 2023, we discuss Semiosis as proactive ideation, instead of a post-publication analytical autopsy tool. We also dispel the thought that semiotics is the “thing you do” after the design.
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.
Last week we cleared up the confusion of signage for semiotic signs. This week I will address the thought that semiotics is the “thing you do” after the design or illustration has been completed. Give me 10 minutes and I will show you how, by implementing Semiosis when you begin designing and illustrating, you will improve your visual communication ability.
Semiotics is not just a critical evaluation tool to autopsy how effective (or not) the design and illustration outcomes are. Pragmatic semiotics - Peircean semiotic theory - is an amazing framework that can mindfully be applied to creatives’ Ideation phases. We can frame this, I suppose, as an Experience Design approach to Visual Communication Design. In Peirce’s Semiosis, the audience is involved in the sign-action process as Interpreter. It is in this fact alone semiotics IS proactive.
When I say Experience Design what do I actually mean? Well, Thomas Wendt in his book Design For Dasein (I will be reviewing this book later in season 2) states three important experience points, which I will now paraphrase to help set the stage for this week’s video. Although experience is based upon an individual’s interpretation of the world around them, designers “can certainly design for the potential of certain qualitative experiences over others.” (p13)
Creatives cannot design “one-to-one causal relationships” with every member of the target audience (and certainly not for everyone in the world). As the old adage goes, we cannot help everyone but everyone can help someone. With that in mind, creatives applying Semiosis during Ideation, can begin to make visual language choices to “lead [the target audience] to desired outcomes.”
If we follow on from the starting point that we as creatives, tasked to answer a client’s brief with a visual communication outcome to facilitate the target audience’s actions… For example, a poster to get people to ATTEND an event, a piece of packaging design to get people to BUY product, a leaflet to raise AWARENESS of an issue that will affect someone’s life, etc. …that are creative abilities cannot ensure everyone ATTENDS, BUYS or are now AWARE (all are actions from the impact of the visual communication).
So if we step back from even considering any causal effects between what the audience sees and does is possible on a one-to-one basis, we are left with the adjective modifier “target.” In design we use the term “target audience” for this very reason. We are not designing for everyone in the world. Nor could we. Let us even break our “audience” down into further strata. We can call the people we direct (on behalf of the client and their needs in the brief) our visual communication outcomes to, to our primary audience.
This will be the context in which a creative’s understanding of the primary audience’s socio-cultural experiences will provide the creatives with clues to select effective visual language to hook and keep the primary audience’s attention. Then the visual communication outcomes produced will still be seen by a secondary audience. This will not necessarily be in the context that was primarily intended. After all, we produce visual media that has an aesthetic appeal beyond its intention. Finally, we can class the ‘rest of the world’ as a tertiary audience.
Following on from the primary, secondary and tertiary structures of the audience, creatives can stop worrying about the tertiary audience when crafting their visual communication work. Creatives can even ignore the secondary level too. Whatever creatives produce as a design or illustration will naturally have a secondary audience based purely on the aesthetic value the secondary audience places on the outcomes.
This now gives the creative permission not to be anxious about pleasing everyone (absolutely impossible to do), but now focussed on a subset of humanity that are the creative’s target audience. Now this still may be a sizeable number of people to focus your visual communication on. That is why the qualifier Thomas Wendt uses is crucial here. Wendt said, “the potential of CERTAIN QUALITATIVE experiences over others.”Semiosis helps creatives address these.
In Semiosis’ sign-action of crafting semiotic signs, the audience, the creative and the client’s needs are in flux. Peirce uses a three-point determination flow to describe what is happening. A Concept needs to be shared. The creative crafts a visual Representation as a sign-vehicle to share that Concept. The Representation hooks and (hopefully) retains the attention of the audience who Interpret the Concept from the Representation.
Now, as this is Semiosis 101 I have used designer-centric terms above, replacing Peirce’s obtuse technical terminology. I trust my explanation just now makes more sense to creatives than purely stating the determination flow as being between an Object, its Representamen and Interpretant? Wendt quite rightly warns people like me who attempt to reduce needless complex terminology to ensure it is accessible, that I “risk a discontinuity between texts.” (p14)
By using designer-centric terminology instead of Peirce’s, I am employing the over-arching theme of season 2 …a Semiotic Rosetta Stone to develop a meta-language between Peirce and creatives. So in that vein of interfacing between theory and practice, let me now draw the strings of my argument together.
The basic level of semiotic Representation of a Concept creatives need to visually communicate to their target (primary) audience is Iconic. Again, thanks to Peirce’s terminology and how certain words are now understood, I will get you to mentally ‘bracket out’ what you normally use “iconic” for. Let us think of the basic building blocks of visual language - lines, shapes, marks, colours, etc. - as Iconic resemblances to things already experienced by our target (primary) audience.
These basic visual building blocks trigger subconscious recognition in the audience. It is in this triggering of subconscious recognition in the audience, that the encoded Concept can begin to semiotically begin to work. Peirce states that nothing is a semiotic sign UNTIL it is PERCEIVED as something more than the obvious denotation.
The colour red is red. But when placed into a design for a fire extinguisher or on a heart shape, the colour red can be connotatively re-read as red meaning something more than red. In this basic example, red is not red. Red is now semiotically read as meaning danger/fire or passion/love/romance. Within Semiosis, red is working at the lowest level of Representation of a Concept, it has been used as an Iconic building block within a visual language, to subconsciously trigger recognition in the target audience as a fast track to meaning.
In our red example we see everything I have outlined coming together. Red used as visual language to connote danger or romance. Red used as a basic building block of visual communication - a semiotic sign - to trigger subconscious recognition from the target (primary) audience. This triggering of subconscious recognition of a visual element as having something beyond itself to communicate, leads the audience to perceive.
This perceiving allows the sign-action to begin to work to provide more visual clues and hints to Interpret, which engages the target audience more and more. The ensuing Semiosis (sign-action) allows for deeper Interpretations of the semiotic Representations, eliciting deeper meaning to be gained. All this is in the hands of the creatives’ during their Ideation phase.
Semiosis applied early on, from the Iconic level upwards, will pay dividends later.
To end this second season two video, we can conclude that, as Semiosis (sign-action) is Pragmatic and focussed on application, semiotic theory can be encoded by creatives at the start of any visual communication job. By mindfully considering the target (primary) audience’s CERTAIN QUALITATIVE experiences, these can provide effective visual clues when creatives’ begin to craft the visual languages they will use. Even a tiny bit of audience research will pay dividends at the lowest semiotic level.
If applied early, Semiosis enhances the chances of the crafted aesthetic semiotically hooking the audience in and suggesting suitable action. Of course, once done someone can still semiotically autopsy that “thing you do.” But by that point you will already know what you semiotically did, and be able to do it again, and again!
Come back next week for another video.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…