Free Transcript of Episode 1.6 The Truth About How Semiosis Enhances Visual Communication
Semiosis 101 Season 1 Video 6 Transcript
Hello readers.
In this free transcript for the video published on Semiosis 101 on 7 Sep 2022, we will align Semiosis with another theory that benefits visual communication - Gestalt theory.
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.
Let us get to today's sixth episode on general Peircean semiotic theory for illustrators and designers. Today in around 10-minutes we will focus on how Semiosis aligns itself with another theory that benefits visual communication - Gestalt theory.
I will first outline Gestalt theory in just basic terms, as there are other YouTubers, such as Tiptut who can give you all, a fuller Gestalt theory explanation. Then I will outline how Gestalt theory and Semiosis can be a powerful team of underpinning theories, to enhance the effectiveness of your visual communication. By bringing in Gestalt theory into this discussion of Peirce's Pragmatic semiotic theory, we open up the conversation to the first powerful set of three levels of Sign-action:
Iconic
Indexical
Symbolic
It will be a double theory pack 10-minutes of semiotic theory, but in design-centric terms. So, stay tuned, subscribe, and let us head into Theoryland…
Today we are going to focus on obviously semiotic theory. Semiosis. But to get to where I want to get to, to discuss Iconic level of semiotic representation from a Peircean point of view, we will get there via another theory. We are still part of Theoryland here. We will move towards Peircean theory, through, essentially, Gestalt theory.
Now Gestalt is a psychology term, and we use that in Visual Communication Design a lot, because it helps designers, illustrators and creatives understand the fundamentals of the building blocks of visual communication. In Gestalt the whole image is different from the sum of its parts. So, think about the parts that make up any image or any design. It is made up of multiple parts, whether or not those are lines, circles, shapes, colours, textures, etc.
All of these things, all make up the visuals that we use to communicate the concept to our intended audience. What I am going to be arguing throughout this talk is the fact that those parts are essentially Iconic parts… using a Peircean semiotic term.
Okay? So there are parallels between Gestalt theory and the fundamental starting point of Semiosis… the Iconic level of semiotic representation. All right… Let us… just before we move forward …let us just get a little bit of an underpinning of Gestalt theory.
Now, there are other videos on YouTube itself that will go into Gestalt theory in a lot more depth than what I am going to go through. So, I am going to give just an overview of it. But I am going to shape it through three things that I think is important for us as visual communication designers, graphic designers, illustrators, to accept.
Gestalt theory is itself, is based upon, the idea that we as humans tend to organise visual elements into groupings. Now these groupings form unified wholes based on several factors, and the three factors I want to focus on here. There are many more, but I am just going to focus on three here. The first one…
Objects will be perceived in the simplest Iconic form, and I am definitely using the word "Iconic" there in a Peircean context. (Over the coming weeks, we will explore exactly what we mean when we talk about Semiosis and Iconic) Okay? There will be a video coming up in several weeks time, just purely on Iconicity. The second point is humans naturally follow lines or curves to understand what they are looking at. The third point is that the human mind will attempt to fill in detail that is not there. Now, those three things…
Objects will be perceived in the simplest forms. Humans naturally follow lines (or curves) to understand what they are looking at. The human mind will attempt to fill in any detail that is not there. These are three underpinning elements that Gestalt theory is built upon. I will leave that to Gestalt theorists to explain better in their videos, but from here, this is where I want to move forward. To do that, I am going to focus on six of the many elements of Gestalt theory that are really relevant to visual communication designers and illustrators. Okay?
Let us move on to the first one… The FIGURE and the GROUND. These are not in any particular order but we will start off with the FIGURE and the GROUND. If you think about the FIGURE as the elements, and the GROUND as the backGROUND, what it is contained on.
Here we see a circle. In our context, it is a FIGURE and the backGROUND, which is the bubble background of "Semiosis 101." The FIGURE itself is white and that pops that circle out from the multi-coloured backGROUND. If it was reversed, and the backGROUND was white and the circle itself was multi-coloured, again it would pop out from the backGROUND.
So we have CONTRAST between the FIGURE and the GROUND. Both of those can swap around, depending on the need, from a visual communication point of view, of what is important within a hierarchy of elements. Is it important that the FIGURE pops from the backGROUND? Or the backGROUND gives the impression that there is something there… a FIGURE in that backGROUND?
Okay? Let us move on from where we are with FIGURE and the GROUND to CLOSURE. All I have just done here is coloured that circle red. You have probably already noticed that I refer to it as a circle. But it is not a circle. It is a circle with a gap. But because I have already mentioned the word ‘circle’ to you, then essentially you have been doing the second Gestalt yourself.
You have been making a CLOSURE of that circle that you see a ‘circle’, rather than a circle with a ‘gap’. So that is CLOSURE. The fact of the eye can jump that gap to make it feel like it is a circle (even though we know it is not a full circle). It is essentially a curved line that does not meet in a circular way.
Let us introduce another element here, and we have got CONTINUATION. We can see now that our red circle …I will keep calling it red circle (because we have already covered CLOSURE). We can now see that it is almost forming a figure of eight. We have got the fact that we got CONTINUATION. We can see the curves of the lines (even though one is coloured green, and the other one is coloured red).
There is a CONTINUATION that helps with our perception that this could be a figure of eight shape. But there are actually two shapes next to each other… very close to each other. The “PROXIMITY” of coming together. (More about [PROXIMITY] in a minute). We have got CLOSURE there, because there are gaps, but are eye could perceive that as a figure of eight, even though it is not a figure of eight. It is not a number. It is just two shapes.
Let us move forwards to SYMMETRY. Okay, SYMMETRY within Visual Communication Design, where two elements, or many elements, mirror each other and form a pleasant, balanced, point of view… in this case we have two circles balancing each other out on a diagonal.
We have got two different colours that one stands out from the other. It is not perceived exactly as a figure of eight, but it is perceived as two interlinked hoops, maybe? Already we are starting to interpret what these things could be. SYMMETRY is helping us read what is essentially just two… (I am going to use the word "Iconic") …rough shapes. Okay? But those shapes have a SIMILARITY to each other.
When shapes have got SIMILARITY, then we can read things into this. As you can see, that by introducing a few more ‘circular’ shapes, that work on CONTINUITY, works on the fact that you got the fact that the CLOSURE is not there, but we can still see the circles.
Then all of a sudden, you got the sense of something is emerging here that we have a way of reading, as an audience, we can see and perceive that these are not just random shapes. So… you know… I think you know, what this is leading to, so, let us go to the final one we are going to discuss within Gestalt theory, which is PROXIMITY.
Now by introducing PROXIMITY of these shapes that are interlinking together, forms this bigger shape. This biggest shape, in our culture, has a meaning. I will leave that to you to decipher what that meaning could possibly be. There is a “gold medal” for anybody who gets it correctly [ONLY JOKING] So, we have here PROXIMITY of all these shapes and colours next to each other, in such a way that it gives meaning.
I have been talking about this so far, purely in Gestalt theory. But Gestalt theory is just another way of approaching Semiosis, and that is where we are going to jump to right now. Because all of these shapes we have here in PROXIMITY are essentially Iconic. Because that is all they are. They are just resemblances to circles and curves. That when you put them together, in a particular way, they have a familiarity to a circle, or to a hoop, or to a ring.
If you put them in a particular colour coordinated pattern, they represent a big sporting event, every four years. Let us just put it that way. But essentially, all they are are are just lines …and colours …and shapes. From a Peircean point of view, that is the fundamental starting point of Semiosis… the Iconic representation of the concept to be communicated.
Now, remember Peirce says, “Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign.” So, these shapes themselves… different colours… different colours… if you just go by the colours… you know there is some other colours there… you can make all kinds of different country representations from that, because a lot of countries’ flags have these colours in them.
So, you know they are circles… you can put them into colour combinations… to create different countries’ motifs for representing the country. These are just basic building blocks of just coloured lines and shapes that we begin to attribute meaning to them, when all of a sudden we begin to interpret them as a sign for something else. Intrinsically, they are just what they are …just shapes …or colours. It is not until we as human beings start applying meaning… potential meaning… or interpretation… to the combinations of these shapes, that as soon as that begins to happen …Semiosis is beginning.
Just to end today's actual talk on Gestalt theory and Semiosis, you can see the fact that where we have really quite complex visual language, that represents big events and small events, big things and small things, that have value and meaning in our everyday lives, that are visual, they have been designed from the Iconic level up. That Iconic level is the very kickstarter, from a graphic design and illustration point of view, of somebody actually beginning to seek the meaning in your work. So, if you can nail the Iconic level, and that is essentially started in your sketchbooks, as soon as you put a line, a drawing in your sketchbook, a little sketch, you are starting to work Iconically without even thinking about it. Because it means ‘something’ to you, you are putting marks down that will hopefully mean ‘something’ to somebody else.
That ‘something’ is hopefully what you want them to take from your… …imagery, your visual communication. So, it all builds up from very basic things that resemble things that we already know. In that resemblance, that “Iconic-ness,” we as visual communication designers and illustrators, we have power to craft meaning with just a few colours …lines, and textures. By using Gestalt theory that helps us put those colours and lines and shapes, etc. into some forms of patterns that can be semiotically interpreted by our target audience. So, that is today's talk over. Come back next week and we will have another talk. We will move this forward, so I am going to leave you on a sort of cliffhanger with what we mean by “Iconic.” Put a pin in that. Come back to us next week, and we will explore what we mean when we talk in Semiosis terms what “Iconic” actually is.
So, that is our 10-minutes of Peircean Semiosis 101 for this week. You can now see how Peirce's Semiosis theory of semiotics can work with Gestalt Theory to enhance visual communication in illustration and graphic design. Check out the link in the description and visit Tiptut's YouTube channel and video on The Gestalt Principles | Basics for Beginners.
This brief theoretical side-step from Peirce into Gestalt, has opened the conversation on applying Semiosis more effectively into Visual Communication Design, to begin to discuss three levels of representation of the concept. Peirce uses three terms to describe three levels of sign-action in semiotic representation of a concept:
The Icon
The Index
The Symbol
These words will have existing denotative meaning for you already, probably. But from now onwards we will begin to go deeper into the philosophical structuring of the semiotic sign-action, and this will mean careful explanation of how Peirce uses his terms and the insights that then gives you to understand Semiosis.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…