Free Transcript of Episode 1.18 How "Thirdness" Mediates EVERYTHING YOU Design or Illustrate!
Semiosis 101 Season 1 Video 18 Transcript
Hello readers.
In this free transcript for the video published on Semiosis 101 on 1 Feb, 2023, we focus in on the context of Semiosis and Visual Communication Design, with his final philosophical category of experience - “Thirdness.”
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. So we are finishing off the month, or just over a month, on the phenomenological roots underpinning how Peircean semiotic theory… the sign-action of that theory …operates.
[In the] first week we talked about FIRSTNESS. The week after that …SECONDNESS. And now we are at the highest level which is THIRDNESS. And we again are using @cspeircespeaks tweets, as a way of getting Peirce's Theory here in front of us. So that from a designer-centric point of view, Semiosis 101 can unpack Peirce’s quite complex language into what is really use useful for designers and illustrators.
So, in this tweet that Peirce starts to describe his three levels of phenomenological experience of how we have semiotic action… sign-action …working. [Peirce] says, “In the ideas of FIRSTNESS, SECONDNESS and THIRDNESS, the three elements or universal categories, appear under their forms of FIRSTNESS.”
So, we start off with FIRSTNESS. And from our perspective as a creative, the level of FIRSTNESS is the moment where people… our AUDIENCE …perceive something. Some piece of visual language, where they actually start to think of it as more than just the obvious.
That at the second level… SECONDNESS… that is the point where once we have got [the AUDIENCE's] attention, once we have hooked them in, then the SECONDNESS is relative to THINGS that are out there. Like your index finger, pointing to relative THINGS in the real world. Now they might be ideas, they may be physical THINGS. They might be places, they might be people, or whatever.
Now the THIRD level…(which is what we are going to be talking about today) is the mediation between those two states. This is not a state that they are aware of. But it is that thing of being "not aware" …to them "being aware." And then from "being aware" to resemblances. Those resemblances start to connect with our AUDIENCE.
By connecting with our AUDIENCE they are perceiving… visual language that we put together as illustrators or designers as elements… that THIS is more than what we are just looking at here. There is something connotatively happening here. What does this mean?
“THIS reminds me of THAT!”
“THAT resembles something I know!”
And we as designers and illustrators can use that visual language to hook… and build on… and that is where Semiosis comes in… the sign-action… because we are moving up to "relative"pointing to existent THINGS but then the THIRD level we MEDIATE them.
What do we mean by that?
So, moving forward… Again, Pierce says, “The THIRD is that which is what is owing to THINGS between which it mediates and which it brings into relation to each other.”
Hmm??? That is a lot of words!
WHAT IS HE TRYING TO SAY HERE???
“This is the THIRD or MEDIATING element between chance, which brings forth FIRST… and original events, and law which produces sequences… or SECONDS.” Come on Pierce, what are you trying to say here?
JUST SPELL IT OUT TO US!!!!!
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN????
SAY WHAT YOU MEAN PEIRCE!!!!
The MEDIATING element between chance, and that brings forth the FIRST. So… if you think about what I said before, there is a moment when somebody is "not aware" …and then all of a sudden they perceive there is something happening in the visual language, that hooks them in… …that this is more than what is a passing fancy.
So, you have got [the AUDIENCE's] attention. At that level of FIRSTNESS. There is meaning. In that level of FIRSTNESS… …that is where you get Iconic representation. Where its resemblances… it feels like something that you are "aware of." But it has no direct meaning, other than it could be… it is a possibility of…
To the SECONDNESS, where THERE! It is THAT… and it POINTS you to someTHING. So …it is a sign where you have something THERE that actually represents a bigger idea and that idea is existent in-the-world. You got an idea that something else is THERE.
So let us move forward to the next slide. Just to simplify down really what Pierce is saying in those quotes, that are within those tweets. The take home here is THIRDNESS, the THIRD, the THIRD level of phenomenological experience…
(What we mean by that is, the phenomena OF experience.)
The THIRD state, is a MEDIATION state. It MEDIATES. It has relation to other THINGS. To each other. So, it is building on Iconic and Indexical… to move us to somewhere where when we say THIS we actually mean… THAT.
Definitely.
But THIS… does not necessarily have a direct connection to THAT! …like say the Indexical level is. It contains Indexical, but Indexical is more about pointing to THINGS, that are that THING. At this level it is now saying ‘when we see THIS" "it means THAT.’
Think of any logo… any logo is at this level of THIRDNESS… of MEDIATION… because all the elements that make up that logo, is MEDIATED by the AUDIENCE and the branded company to say… "when you see THIS…" (the white swoosh on a red background) it means Coca-Cola. Or five coloured rings together means the Olympics… or whatever… or whatever… That is MEDIATED… that we come to accept… that when we see THAT… it is THIS. And when we see THIS… it is now THAT.
So then when we think of the THIRDNESS… and the sense of MEDIATING… it includes the other two levels, because it is MEDIATING between the starting point where THINGS are there, and we get a sense of resemblance… to the next level where we get something that it is THAT, THIS is THAT.
To the THIRD level, where when we see THIS… it means THAT.
So, what we are talking about here… is… essentially, from our AUDIENCE's point of view… (Do you remember the Determination Flow? We have covered that in previous talks) …the Determination Flow. What we have is the CONCEPT. (Pierce calls this the OBJECT) …the CONCEPT to be communicated… visually communicated. From that CONCEPT it passes through the designer, or the illustrator …the visual communicator… for them to define the REPRESENTATION… the appropriate REPRESENTATION of that CONCEPT, through their aesthetic, through the visual language that they use in their design or illustration.
From there that should lead to a successful INTERPRETATION by our AUDIENCE. And that AUDIENCE then… through what they are looking at…connects back to the CONCEPT. They understand the CONCEPT.
In THIRDNESS… it is the relationship between all of these elements coming together… the Iconic and the Indexical… working as sign-action… powerful sign-action …Semiosis… (Semiosis is another word for sign-action) …into something that when we see THIS it becomes a law that these people, who are our AUDIENCE, will go, “ah we see this, in this particular order, in this particular colour, in this particular way, we know that means”…whatever organisation, product, whatever it is.
We know THAT means THAT.
The obvious ones (as I keep saying) are… Coca-Cola and Nike. These are the [brands] we can see in our Mind's Eye straight away. They are made up of Iconic levels of THINGS… that when it comes to the Symbolic level (which we are talking about here) …because the Symbolic level of representation is within the state of THIRDNESS… it works because the AUDIENCE has gone with us, and accepted when they see THIS… it means THAT now.
We accept it means THAT now. That is our LAW, that is the ARGUMENT we are making, that when we see THIS it now means THAT.
So, let us move forward… What we have here… again, is the fact that within the state of THIRDNESS… so the THIRD, the state of THIRDNESS, this is a state of our BEING where we are at a level where we are processing THINGS… we are MEDIATING THINGS that we know when we see certain THINGS together… in a particular way… It has got a bigger meaning. So, Symbolic signs…Peirce says, “a genuine Symbol is a Symbol that has general meaning.”
So, we are talking about a general rule here… a general LAW… a general ARGUMENT… that when we see particular THINGS in a particular way, in a particular cultural setting… context… we know that THAT… is meaning THIS. And generally we agree that. So, “A Symbol, once in being, spreads among the peoples in use and in experience, its meaning grows.”
So, think about a Symbol. We are using the word Symbol in a Peircean context here. The word Symbol in the English language is used in many different ways, but here, what we are talking about within a Symbol, is a level of semiotic communication that is generally agreed, that when we see it THIS way it means THAT. And for that to actually have its meaning, that meaning needs to be shared.
Just think of any successful brand that you become aware of the brand …even if you have never bought the brand, or used the brand. You become aware of the brand, because meaning has grown. It might be through social media… it might be through word-of-mouth… it might be through different ways… but the meaning has grown.
So, “A Symbol is a sign which refers to the CONCEPT”(Peirce calls that the OBJECT) “that it denotes by virtue of a LAW, usually as an association of general ideas,” which operates to cause the Symbol to be INTERPRETED, as referring to that CONCEPT”…to that original OBJECT.
So this is about the full circle of semiotic sign-action, that at this level it takes people back to the CONCEPT…that connects with the CONCEPT in a general way, a generally agreed way, and that is how logos work. This is at this higher level… of a Symbolic level.
Okay?
So let us just finish off, moving forward, to a take-home piece… a bite-size take-home piece… and this week's bite-sized piece of applicable semiotic knowledge is… During your development… when trying to solve a problem of what visual elements can you combine to visually communicate a complex CONCEPT e.g. logo design, branding, emblems, etc. whatever it is.
Consider not only what general visual elements are familiar to your intended target AUDIENCE… But also the AUDIENCE's interpretation of what they see is MEDIATED by a general combination of the visually familiar, connected to the THINGS they already know…That is THIRDNESS in sign-action.
Okay?
[Just to] quickly complete this… and unpack this… that the MEDIATION is tied into AUDIENCE interpretation. AUDIENCE interpretation is controlled by the designer’s and illustrator’s visual language that they choose, to represent the ideas that they want, but at the highest level within THIRDNESS this is generally agreed by your target AUDIENCE that when they see THIS it means THAT. It is like a shorthand to a huge CONCEPT… you know, an organisation is a huge CONCEPT to get across in a very simple [way] …you know, just few marks.
So, THIRDNESS in sign-action is that level where people are familiar enough with what they are seeing to actually say, “Ah, THIS is now THAT.”
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…