Free Transcript of Episode 1.16 Put Some 'Firstness' Into Designing And Illustrating…
Semiosis 101 Season 1 Video 16 Transcript
Hello readers.
In this free transcript for the video published on Semiosis 101 on 11 Jan 2023, we will wrestle with Peirce’s philosophical thinking behind the state of Firstness to help illustrators and designers to better understand their audiences.
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.
Hi! Welcome to this week's talk. Last week… well just before Christmas it was… we covered To The Things Themselves which started to discuss Peirce's phenomenological states in which our audience interprets… any of the semiotic signs that we create, and interpret our designs and illustrations.
So, in that video we covered [Peirce's] three phenomenological states FIRSTness, SECONDness and THIRDness. and yes [Peirce] does call them that.
Now FIRSTNESS is a state that is existent. So, this all relates to us humans as… BE-ING. BE-ING in-the-world. We are human beings. We exist. So, the FIRST state is about spontaneity. It is about existence and BEING in that moment… of unrelated THINGS but existent within that realm. SECONDNESS. You move up a level to being the THINGS that we experience, are relative to, all the THINGS that we have experienced. And level three… THIRDNESS …is mediated by the THINGS that we have.
So, we covered that in the first talk. Check that one out. But what we also have here, is we are going to reuse @CSPeircespeaks tweets where this Twitter account basically pulls out quotes from Peirce and tweets from "Beyond the Grave". and Peirce says…
"In the ideas of FIRSTNESS, SECONDNESS and THIRDNESS… the three elements, or universal categories, appear under the forms of FIRSTNESS."
What [Peirce] means by that is… we need to start from somewhere… and as humans we are… existing-in-the-world. We are… BEING-in-the-world. And just by BE-ING… we take in a lot of THINGS that are necessarily unrelated at first until we start making meanings between them. That is sort of where we start from with a sense of FIRSTNESS.
So I am just going to delve over the next three weeks…into FIRSTNESS, SECONDNESS, and THIRDNESS. But this week we are going to go straight into FIRSTNESS and how that relates from a graphic designer / illustration point of view… to our target AUDIENCE. So that we can hook them in… by being a bit more mindful of these things.
Okay, so if you have to ask your target AUDIENCE what do they know about this, they will not have any idea. You know. So… there is no point in trying to approach it from that perspective. But, like anything… this is a state of BE-ING. It is not quantifiable… it is qualitative. So Peirce, when he starts talking about FIRSTNESS he says here… "the FIRST is that whose being is simply in itself…" …"not referring to anything nor lying behind anything".
So… let us move on. [Peirce] says "The FIRST is that they act in one determinant direction" "and tend asymptotically [value as an expression] toward bringing about an ultimate state of things." So we need to unpack what [Peirce] is really saying here because like you are finding out through this Semiosis 101 YouTube channel…Peirce says a lot… and he has a great amount of ideas that are applicable but it does need… some design-centric language… to bring it back into something that designers and illustrators can understand. So, let me just try and help you towards that solution.
Okay? So… you are probably asking as many questions of what [Peirce is] trying to say here as your target audience would be. Okay? So let us just break this down a bit more. Okay, let us just pull out some words from his quotes.
Obviously in this talk we are talking about FIRSTNESS. So he starts talking about FIRST. We are talking about a sense of BE-ING here and it is at the simplest level …of BEING. So, just think about …you… individually…never mind being a designer… or an illustrator… or an AUDIENCE… or whatever… just think about being human. You exist. You are a BEING in-the-world. You simply EXIST… no matter what is thrown at you on a day-to-day basis. You know you EXIST.
So, in the state of FIRSTNESS… the THINGS that we encounter are not necessarily there to refer to other THINGS… they are there a stimuli to ourselves. [Peirce] talks about FIRSTNESS being in one determinate direction. So if you think about… if you are made aware of something…
Okay? (…and this is where we start tying it into graphic design and illustration) …if you are aware of someTHING …there was a moment when you were NOT aware. Then there is a moment when you ARE aware. That changes you because you are NOW aware. That is one determinate direction. A state of NOT being aware, to a state OF being aware.
We can argue that any piece of Visual Communication Design… graphic design… illustration… there is a point where… until our AUDIENCE starts truly engaging with our work… other than just passing it by… that there was a moment BEFORE they became aware of your work …intrigued by your work… brought into your work… hooked into your work… aesthetically brought in… then your designs can then start to work on your target AUDIENCE. And that is one determinate direction… from NOT being aware of your design… to NOW being aware that this design… this illustration… is trying to communicate something to them.
This is where the state of FIRSTNESS happens. It is the ultimate state of THINGS. So if you think about as a human being we are surrounded by stimuli that are THINGS. Real THINGS, ideas, senses… all these different THINGS… and it is not until we have that moment of being AWARE of someTHING… that we start to try to make sense in our world… in our state of BE-ING… that "this must mean something to me".
It is within that broad phenomenological state of FIRSTNESS that we start to work semiotically… making connections to THINGS that have been there in plain sight. But until somebody joins them together…being AWARE of it… they always just pass it by.
Okay? So let us just move one step forward, and try and summarise what we have just covered there. Okay, so… our AUDIENCES… target AUDIENCE… fellow human beings… that we are trying to communicate to through the brief that we have been given by our client… are like the designer… and like the illustrator… are in a state of BE-ING. We exist in-the-world. We have experiences… we have lived experiences… we have stimuli that we respond to… stimuli we don't respond to.
So from the point of view of Peirce's theory… a sense of FIRSTNESS does not refer to anything… it just exists as that FIRST state and simply put it is the state of NOT being aware to THEN being aware. and once you ARE aware then you START seeking meaning.
Okay? So that is where that is one determinate direction of your work, and an ultimate state of THINGS that all the stimuli that our target AUDIENCE would respond to a day-to-day basis is there up for grabs for designers and illustrators to tap into to HOOK the target AUDIENCE in.
Okay? So let us just now pull this together and connect it to something that we have already covered in previous videos. Which is… Iconic representation. So, Iconic representation… which we have covered in previous videos… and this is a quote from Tony Jappy in his excellent book I have made it into the designer-centric terms. So the designer-centric term replaces the word OBJECT (which is Peirce's term) for CONCEPT (something that illustrators and designers will understand).
So, I will read it with the designer-centric terms put in place… "Iconic representation can only relate to a [Concept] by qualities as it resembles a [Concept] through the association of shared qualities, whether that [Concept] exists or not." So, Iconic level of representation operates in a state of FIRSTNESS.
There are resemblances to… and it is only when you become aware of seeing someTHING… and we used an example in the previous video of "red" where you start to associate "red" with someTHING. Then you are starting the semiotic journey off. That happens in the state of FIRSTNESS. We are in the state of FIRSTNESS anyway. But it is only when you start to make connections to THINGS that you know EXISTS that you become aware of someTHING that is trying to tell you something …using connotative visual language… that your visual communicating to your target AUDIENCE… moves to a level where the semiotic sign… the Iconic sign starts to work as a semiotic sign.
So, we covered that in previous videos from an Iconic point of view. This video… bookends those videos by talking about it from the philosophical state… of the phenomenological state… of the fact that we EXIST in-the-world… and our first state is FIRSTNESS… Within which there is a moment when you are NOT aware… to a moment when you ARE aware. When you ARE aware…then it is a determinate direction that takes you in. That is what you do as a designer when you start to pull in essentially semiotic signs to help strengthen the message you want to get across connotatively. Okay?
So, let us just end today on a take-home. A little bit of homework for you. This week's bite-sized piece of applicable semiotic knowledge is that… Remember that a semiotic sign only begins to work when perceived as a sign for some THING. So that perception …as soon as you perceive something you are going from being NOT aware - to aware. And you perceive it as someTHING, other than it would be to somebody else who may just walk by.
So it is within the state of FIRSTNESS that our AUDIENCE begins to spot iconic resemblances to THINGS they already know. As designers and illustrators… at the basic level of sketching possible ideas to answer the brief what THINGS… (as examples colours, shapes, marks, etc.) …can you explore to help you to HOOK your target AUDIENCE in, that are resemblances to THINGS that they are familiar with?
Now this thought exercise you are doing… this those exercise is your starting point of engaging with the state of FIRSTNESS. This phenomenological state of FIRSTNESS. Now you do not have to go any further than that…but it is that case of you are aware NOW… you were NOT aware before… you are NOW aware now. That this is a phenomenological state… a philosophical state in which…humans start to make sense [of it].
This is applicable into all kinds of other theories… Gestalt Theory, [etc.] There is a moment when you did NOT think it… and there is a moment when you DO think it. As designers and illustrators you can make people transition from one to the other. And that is through getting them into a state of FIRSTNESS.
Okay. So that is it for this week. Come back next week and we will have more, but that is it.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…