- Create a general model of design
- Provide a uniform system for understanding architectural, visual, musical, & technical design (e.g. software)
- Label the fundamental entities in the domain of design
Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and communicated.¹ My usage of "semiotics" in "semiotic material" is in reference to Peircian Semiotics. Pierce said the process of communicating is composed of 3 parts: a sign (or signifier), an object or idea (or signified), and the person recieving the sign (or interpretant).
The American flag is a signifier for the country of America. As an American, through shared cultural conditioning, it is also a signifier for American ideals: life, liberty, and the persuit of happyiness (classical libertarianism). The flag is the signifier, America & it's ideals are the signified, and I am the interpretant.
Semiotic material is the fundamental substrate of all design. Like substrate in organic chemistry, it is the subject that is being modified. Semiotic material is anything that, when percieved by a human interpretant, causes a change of brain state. All signifiers are semiotic material. Any sign that is interpreted must be semiotic material, since the act of intepreting or percepting is itself predicated on a change of brain state.
The first difference between a sign and semiotic material, however, is that the signified entities can be semiotic material, too. My argument is as follows:
- Signs can be manipulated
- Signs can be interpeted by an interpretant
- Signs signify ideas
- 2 Signs may be put adjacent to one another, such that an interpetant is interpeting 2 signs at the same time
- An adjacency of signs can cause an adjacency of ideas, such that the interpetant is aware of both the signified ideas at once
- The interpretant may also percieve the adjacency of signified
.: The adjacency of signified ideas may itself be interpreted
I grant that signified ideas are immutable, insofar as one cannot change what some sign means for some person. However, I assert that the signified ideas can be manipulated, via signs, such that an interpretant is simultaneously aware of 2 or more signified ideas simultaneously. I will hencefore call this an "adjacency". Adjacencies themselves can be percieved and interpreted by the interpretant.
While "adjacency" implies nearness on a cartesian coordinate system, it is not necessarily or literally spatial. Even so, visuospatial manipulation of symbols is the most obvious example of adjacencies:
The American flag is a symbol for American ideals. An image of a gelatin RX capsul is an icon that signifies drugs. Now imagine the capsule is superimposed over the American flag. These two signs are adjacent to one another, such that I am seeing both at the same time. I interpret both signs, and I have both signified ideas in my head at once.
Now I am trying to interpret the adjacency. I am trying to understand the reason someone created this adjacency. The proximity, that one is literally inside the visual bounds of the other, leads me to extrapolate the relationship between the signified RX drugs and the signifi ed US ideologies.
The second difference is that I consider certain non-sign stimuli that invoke brainstates semiotic material, too. Examples include the color yellow, which some studies suggest make babies cry. The color is semiotic material because it invokes some emotion- perhaps through primitive, lower-order brain structures- in an observant. However, because it doesn't have an associated signified idea, it is not a sign. Other examples include binural beats, which are not signs, yet still invoke emotionally affective brain states.
In conclussion, semiotic material is the fundamental substrate of design. Semiotic material includes anything that transmits brainstates to an observant. Peircian signifiers are semiotic material. Through manipulation via adjacencies I argue that signified ideas may be semiotic material, too. Finally, semiotic material is also primitive, non-sign colors and tones, which affect humans' primitive brain structures to invoke emotion without signifying anything.
Design is the manipulation of semiotic material to achieve some premeditated goal.
A goal may be to convince an interpretant to purchase something (advertisement). A goal may to design something that is easy for an interpretant to understand, something that furnishes the interpretant with a useful mental model for usage, thereby enabling them to complete tasks quickly (software, appliances).
A given typology of design may have multiple goals.