Free Semiosis 101 Transcript 4.13:

Semiosis 101

22 Oct 2025 — 7 min read

How Can Our Creativity be Enhanced by Other Points-of-view?

Hello readers.

In this free transcript for the episode 4.13 published on Semiosis 101 on Weds 15^th October 2025, we try to break any bad habits of first-order thinking to bring our audience into our ideation phase. How audiences’ understand what they see is based on what they have already experienced in-the-world.

This is a phenomenologically existential way of framing the context from which your audience forms their understanding of what they see. As designers and illustrators, knowledge of important contexts are crucial to you creatives, as much as your target audience…

Watch the free episode on YouTube for the full impact…

…and here is the episode’s transcript.</I>

How Can Our Creativity be Enhanced by Other Points-of-view?

First-order thinking is god-like, an expectation that others will think and do as you do. Life is not like that, and commercially, design and illustration is always for an audience – not yourself. In your ideation, a change of thinking and applying semiotics before a mark is made on a sketchbook page can be beneficial. Let us re-calibrate your initial thinking…

We now take a semantic turn in applying Semiosis into illustrations and designs. Semiosis’ sign-action power is predicated on your audience’s interpretations. In this 13th episode of Semiosis 101’s season four, we try to break any bad habits of first-order thinking to bring our audience into our ideation phase.

How audiences’ understand what they see is based on what they have already experienced in-the-world. This is a phenomenologically existential way of framing the context from which your audience forms their understanding of what they see.

As designers and illustrators, it is useful to gain an understanding of understanding. How to encode the appropriate semiotic qualities into your visual language, emerge from understanding what your audience already understands. After all, knowledge of important contexts are crucial to you creatives, as much as your target audience.

First-order thinking is analogous to a god-like attitude that what you create will be used and understood as you want it to be. When I ask young undergraduate students who they are designing for, they say “ME.” First-order thinking at its best. Every time your target audience does not see what “IT” is - even though YOU think “IT” is visually obvious - is a First-order thinking semiotic failure. First-order thinking (in the designer and illustrator contexts I am using), emphasises where your creative mindset restricts your ability to truly VISUALLY COMMUNICATE, if you are not careful.

To help my undergraduate students break from first-order thinking, I repeat a statement one of my PhD supervisors Professor Simon Biggs, an artist, said to me back in 2008,

“Artists pose questions. Designers answer problems.”

This difference is crucial.

To answer problems (e.g. everything from this book needs illustrations to this global company needs a re-brand and campaign) it is not enough to just do what you like. There is a purpose (concept) behind what you design or illustrate. That is not YOU, sorry. Everything you illustrate or design (representation of the concept) has an audience. That audience will not be a captive audience.

You need to understand how your target audience will understand and interpret from what you have aesthetically created. Second-order thinking is dialogical which, by adopting into your semiotic mindset, opens up a communicational space in which different understandings can co-exist. Jorge Frascara speaks of three essential functions of any form of visual communication of a message: attention needs to be attracted, retained so that then it can begin communicating.

Bo Bergstrom discusses in Essentials of Visual Communication three visual communication perspectives that align with Semiosis: intention, proximity and reception. Bergstrom’s intention and reception are obvious alignments. So we will now focus on the perspective of proximity, to understand how this enhances how you visually communicate. Proximity aligns with what Frascara defines as a communicational situation.

For your visual communication outcome to be successfully understood, your perspective of proximity requires you to understand your audience’s own perspective of reception. Whatever visual language you use, it will have an impact on the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of your audience. Peirce’s Abductive reasoning, in the form of building a working Hypothesis, helps you put yourself into a communicational situation to semiotically ideate what your audience already has experience of. First-order thinking prevents you from doing this.

From your perspective of proximity you can engage in second-order thinking to begin forming a working Hypothesis on what your audience finds familiar. Abductive reasoning as Hypothesis allows for your understanding to grow with each new insight. It is structured logic but a form of logic which evolves the ‘truths’ it reveals.

In the last episode I used an example of cinematic darkness as a familiar quality which a cinema-going audience would find comfortable. This Abductive insight allows you to begin to semiotically encode your visual language with qualities to trigger audience attention. These weak semiotic qualities of ‘darkness’ may instantly make the audience perceive a possible connection between themselves, and the concept that is intended to be visually communicated. If not, then your working Hypothesis will reveal further insights to ideate and test.

Your ideation phase is for you to work out what will be the most successful composition, irrespective of your media or personal taste. It is never the first idea, as the creative process is predicated on iteration. Ideas are sketched, analysed, tested and then abandoned or developed toward a successful solution. You, as illustrators and designers, are already confident in your abilities to design or illustrate.

A perspective of proximity and second-order thinking can be built into a working Hypothesis on your target audience. By bringing yourself closer as you ideate, to what the audience’s lived experiences reveal about what the initial qualities they will find familiar, you open up a working dialogue. This is a Frascaran communicational situation where different understandings can co-exist to discover what will semiotically attract and retain audience attention.

Such a creative communicational situation in which your proximity to understanding audience lived experiences, exposes you to strengthen your semiotic mindset too. By seeking dialogue through a working Hypothesis, you naturally break out of first-order thinking into second-order thinking. If you want to read more about this then check out the Semiosis 101 Semiotic Resource on semiosis101.online. Link is below in the description.

By understanding understanding you are growing as a creative in-the-world. Your creativity is enhanced by seeking out these other points-of-view to grow a working Hypothesis. This means that your ideation …your initial sketching of very rough ideas can immediately align itself to what you already understand about what your audience knows. As you discover more about your audience, your Hypothesis evolves, your ideas become stronger, while semiotically you use familiar qualities.

Just think about this. As creatives you already engage in ideation. As creatives, you now are aware that your target audience’s lived experiences can provide valuable insights to qualities they already find familiar. As creatives, by placing yourself into a perspective of proximity communicational situation as you ideate, you align your creative mindset with how the audience will understand what they see.

As creatives, by breaking out of first-order thinking you allow yourself to see your audience’s own points-of-view and lived experiences. This new approach and mindset informs your own working Hypothesis on what will visually connect the audience to your intended concept. You know the thing your client needs you to visually communicate. Once you are at this point Semiosis has your creative back. Its pragmatic semiotic sign-action will enhance your visual communication.

In the last season of Semiosis 101 I spent several episodes discussing semiotic ideation, so check out omnibus 3.3 (or episodes 3.8-3.10) to catch up on semiotic sketching.

To summarise how Semiosis can semiotically structure your ideation, to enhance how effective you visually communicate, let me quickly remind you of the fundamental points of pragmatic semiotic sign-action. Semiotic signs have varying levels of Perception, Representation and Delivery Power. Peirce defines ten classes of semiotic signs that grow in power, from weak qualities to strong generally agreed signs. These sign classes manipulate the three power levels leading to different impacts of communicating meaning.

A Peircean semiotic sign is triadic, and Semiosis works on the determination flow between concept > representation > interpretation. The creative needs the audience. Semiotically, creativity can be enhanced by embracing its determination flow. Remember you have always been working semiotically whether you accept it or not. Your enhancement will develop by developing your semiotic mindset within a perspective of proximity to your audience.

By understanding their lived experiences, you can gain insights to how you can visually align the concept you need to visually communicate, to what the audience already know. To do this, a change in your creative mindset, from first-order to second-order thinking, is crucial.

In the next episode we will look how you can semiotically avoid second-guessing your audience. So, subscribe to be notified when this next free episode is published. Or become a Semiosis 101 Producer on Patreon and watch all future episodes months ahead of YouTube …and gain exclusive access to Patreon-only video content and a credit on future episodes.

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