Free Transcript of Episode 1.9 The Truth of When A Sign Is A Sign
Semiosis 101 Season 1 Video 9 Transcript
Hello readers.
In this free transcript for the video published on Semiosis 101 on 5 Oct 2022, we explore the fundamentally important thing in semiotics …when does a semiotic sign begin to work as a semiotic sign?
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 the ninth episode on general Peircean semiotic theory for illustrators and designers. Today in around 10-minutes, we will focus on When Is A Sign A Sign?
What I mean by that is the fundamental starting point of semiotics… What is an actual semiotic sign? Well in Peircean terms, a semiotic sign is not a sign until it is perceived as a sign. We will explore that conundrum in today's video, and in doing so begin our journey into how a “Concept" is Represented through three Iconic, Indexical and Symbolic levels. In just 10-minutes I will have you rethinking what you "think" you know those terms mean… after all we ARE in the context of Pragmatic semiotic theory!
Then we will see HOW Semiosis' power was in plain sight all the time in our sketchbook scribblings without us knowing. Together, within Peirce's semiotic sign-action we will reimagine your ideation design processes. Again, it will be a theory-packed 10 minutes of Semiosis in designer-centric terms. So, stay tuned, subscribe below, hit that bell, and let us go.
Welcome to this week's talk. This week we are going to focus in on a fundamental, obvious element, that can get lost in the theory. This is one that I have to keep reminding my students, when they struggle with the theory… and focusing on the fundamental aspect of when is a “sign” a SIGN?
Okay. So we are talking about, obviously, semiotic signs here. Let us just go back to Peirce as our starting point, who says “Nothing is a sign, unless it is interpreted as a sign.”
Over the weeks, we will keep revisiting this fundamental point that a piece of visual communication, or what we hope is visual communication, an image, a piece of design, does not begin to work semiotically until our target audience interprets it as SOMETHING more than just an image.
Okay? Hold that thought, because that is where we are going to explore from now on.
So, let us just remind ourselves of Semiosis - sign-action. Peirce calls this Semiosis. That is his word for sign-action, and the Determination Flow of how sign-action works, (from a Peircean point of view), is… we start off with the "concept" to be communicated. Peirce calls it the OBJECT. Graphic design, illustration, Visual Communication Design. We are using designer-centric terms here, and we are going to call it the “Concept” to be communicated. The “Concept” comes from the brief, the client, the needs of the brief. So, the “Concept” is where we start it. And, as designers…as illustrators… we look for visual language to communicate that “Concept” in some way.
How THAT is Represented… is our second part of the sign-action. But how we represent SOMETHING of the “Concept,” that needs to be communicated, is not enough. Now Semiology - the SIGNIFIED and the SIGNIFIER - the SIGNIFIER and the SIGNIFIED - those two elements, two elements, working together, only takes us so far.
This is where Peirce is really useful for designers, from very early stages of designing, because it does not just stop with the two, the dyadic. It just does not stop with the two (of the SIGNIFIER and the SIGNIFIED). It goes from the “concept” we need to communicate…
How is that Represented to our target audience? How will it be Interpreted, so that the target audience can make the connection to the “Concept”? So, by bringing the target audience into the semiotics of how we represent the “Concept,” it enriches our ability to enhance the visual communication to our target audience. That is where we are going to springboard into today's talk further, because we are going to focus in on the audience and how the actual “Concept” we need to communicate is interpreted by that target audience? How we do that? Well, we will focus in on just the first part - the “Concept."
In Peircean Semiosis, what we have here is essentially… Peirce works on triadic elements… elements of threes working together… and those three elements working together at different subclasses of low, middle, and high functionality. These are the things that power Peircean semiotics that we, as visual communication designers - graphic designers, illustrators - can really hone our skills on. Okay?
So, we are only focusing on one of those three triadic elements and that is the one for “Concept.” How do we represent the “Concept?” Well, Peirce calls it the the Icon, the Index and the Symbol …but what we will do is… we will approach it from the adjective… because there are issues with the terms.
The word Iconic has different connotations, different understandings what Iconic means… and different uses of it. As I said in previous videos (and in future videos)… when we use the word “Iconic” and “Symbolic” …we are doing it purely within the framework of Peircean theory.
So, I just want you to bracket your thinking just to this… within Semiosis… never mind any other meaning of the word “Iconic” …it means something particular in Semiosis. That is what we are focusing on, and it helps us… well it helps the target audience interpret the “Concept” and that is where I am getting to with this. So let us explore these things. What do we mean by these things?
Well… Iconic is the lowest subclass of HOW to represent the “Concept” within Semiosis - within semiotics. The Iconic… Think of [Iconic] as the building blocks… the fundamental building blocks… from which great design and great illustration can be built upon. You do not build a cathedral straight away. You build it one brick at a time, one block at a time, and that is essentially the metaphor we are going to use for Iconic. And what does Iconic mean in the context of Semiosis? Well think about resemblances, qualities, and resemblances and perception. Because it is a very qualitative way of recognising that certain shapes, certain lines, certain colours, certain textures have meaning, intrinsic meaning, that is contextual to…
1. HOW the (Icons) are placed together in a design, and 2. our own EXPERIENCES that we can bring to that… to recognise that when we see THIS colour, and THAT line, and THAT texture… in this way, it resembles something we already know. It resembles qualities that we already have. That putting together in the context we are seeing them, suggest to us, it could be a possibility of being… a…
Okay? So, it is that level of quite qualitative, non-defined, initial interpretations of… "THAT reminds me of…" or… "THAT is a bit like…” or… "Ooh, THAT looks a bit like…” …that is where Iconic starts to work. And if that [Iconic] starts to work, then we are starting Semiosis - the process of sign-action - because all of a sudden, something that was just a line now has some meaning that we are looking for. It takes on an Iconic level of Representation that we are looking for. Because it could SUGGEST something ELSE. All of a sudden, when the sign is SIGN? It is when we start adding meaning to SOMETHING that is at an iconic level…
>FINGERSNAP<
“Oh, THAT reminds me of THIS”…
“Oh, THAT reminds me of THAT.
Moving up a level… Indexical.
The middle subclass of how to represent the “Concept” is when we pick out the “Concept” by means of pointing. If you think about your index finger, we use that to point to things. THINGS that are there in front of us. THINGS that we can see and THINGS that we know, that we try and communicate to other people… we go… “Oh, there… there… there… there." A similar approach to understanding what Indexical representation is within Peircean semiotic theory. We are talking about HOW to craft our visual language to POINT TO existing things. So those existing things could be… real things, in the real world… that we can pick up, and we can move, and we can share, we can hand over to somebody else, and we know it is THERE. But it could also be ideas. It could be ideas from literature, it could be ideas from philosophy, it could be all kinds of different things, so an idea is also an existing thing.
Think about memes. It is an existent thing that exists, but it may not be tangible - but it exists. So Indexical… we move up our representation and as soon as people start seeing the things that we are crafting in our visual communication, they go…
>FINGERSNAP<
“Ah, THAT is…”
>FINGERSNAP<
BANG!
So, moving from "THAT reminds me of…" or… "THAT is a possibility that could become THAT" is…
>FINGERSNAP<
"Ah! THAT is…"
It is pointing at an existent thing from our experience, as the target audience that we already know, that you, as the designer, has crafted for us to start that process of moving up, to enhancing the visual communication, to work at an Indexical level.
Moving one level up to Symbolic, this is where the “Concept” is understood and interpreted as a convention or a rule.
So, at this level, the highest level of semiotic Representation, within sign-action, within Semiosis, the Symbolic level of communication is a general level, because it transcends any individuality of meaning and the whole of the target audience agrees that when they see THESE things together it [now] means THAT.
So, it is no longer just about “Oh, THAT is THAT” as an existent thing, but all these things come together to actually suggest “ah, THIS means THAT now.”
What do I mean by that? Well. Think about any piece of branding. Any logo. When we see the Iconic shapes within a logo
>FINGERSNAP<
That we go…“Okay, THAT now means Coca-Cola. THAT now means… when we see these things together… Shell. That now means Costa Coffee… whatever… whatever the brand is.
When we see these things together at a Symbolic level, the conventional rule is when we see them like that [SYMBOLIC LEVEL] …it means THIS now. Of course, if you never heard of any of those organisations, then the branding will not make any difference whatsoever. It would only exist at an Iconic level.
So when is a sign A SIGN?
Essentially it is when the audience makes the interpretation that has been crafted - hopefully "craftily" - by the visual communication designer - the illustrator, the graphic designer - to be successfully interpreted. And the fundamental building blocks of getting that process of interpretation kick-started, towards what we need the target audience to gain from the piece of visual communication that we are designing, is for the Semiosis - the semiotic signs we include in our design work - to actually communicate the “Concept” that we want the audience to take from that.
If the audience do not engage in that interpretation successfully, they will just see the image, the pretty pictures that we produce, and walk away from it, but if they get engaged (and that might be for a fraction longer than 30 seconds, it may be for a lifetime), but once they engage in interpreting "What does THIS mean?" - not just reading it, but actually taking in the whole tone, the whole attitude, the language, the use of typography, the use of imagery - to reinforce the “Concept” …about the reinforcing of the “Concept”…all starts with the very fundamental building blocks… which is the Iconic building blocks.
As soon as the Iconic building blocks are interpreted, as a possibility, "THIS" could mean "THAT" that is when Semiosis - sign-action - is kickstarted.
Over the coming weeks, we will go into more depth about what does that mean, and how can we enhance that? Use that to enhance visual communication. So come back and watch more of these videos over the coming weeks.
So, that is our ten minutes of Peircean Semiosis 101 for this week. Now we see that designing semiotic visual communication is a natural part of our existing design process. As Polanyi in his book The Tacit Dimension clarifies for us Visual Communication Designers is that we “know what” and “know how” to solve design problems. But we creatives refer to this knowledge as “tacit knowledge” …as a “knowledge we cannot tell.” With your blossoming understanding of Semiosis you can now build up theoretical bricks of knowledge AND begin to explain first to yourself HOW you build successful and effective visual communication for your intended audience.
In Peirce's Semiosis, its sign-action power between what the concept is, how it is represented which facilitates an interpretation sets its foundation levels in Iconic, Indexical and Symbolic representation. Now these building blocks are integral in all aspects of how we design or illustrate, which leads our intended audience's interpretation connotatively to the intended concept and message. Over the coming weeks in Semiosis 101 we will explore further HOW Iconic, Indexical and Symbolic representation can be manipulated and applied to enhance visual communication in illustration and graphic design.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…