Free Semiosis 101 Transcript 4.15:

Semiosis 101

12 Nov 2025 — 7 min read

How CAN CREATIVES Semiotically Communicate Complex Messages?

Hello readers.

In this free transcript for the episode 4.15 published on Semiosis 101 on Weds 12^th November 2025, we explore the performance of a pragmatic semiotic sign, which is powered by a sign-action determination flow.

This is between the concept to visually communicate, how your visual language represents that, for your target audience to interpret. This semiotic sign-action is called Semiosis. This semiotic sign-action lays dormant in plain sight until the audience perceives it as meaning-bearing. Then like a Trojan Horse, Semiosis springs…

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…and here is the episode’s transcript.

How CAN CREATIVES Semiotically Communicate Complex Messages?

The performance of a pragmatic semiotic sign is powered by a sign-action determination flow. This is between the concept to visually communicate, how your visual language represents that, for your target audience to interpret. This semiotic sign-action is called Semiosis.

This semiotic sign-action lays dormant in plain sight until the audience perceives it as meaning-bearing. Then like a Trojan Horse, Semiosis springs…

I love the Trojan Horse metaphor, so I will be unashamedly using it a lot over the next few episodes. In this 15th episode of Semiosis 101’s season four, I will stay with hollow wooden metaphors. Previously I have used a wooden Russian babushka doll as a metaphor for the nesting of weaker semiotic signs within stronger signs. A babushka doll is good to understand the nesting of lesser things inside greater things.

However, the Trojan Horse metaphor is ideal in explaining how something that is originally perceived as dormant can suddenly be activated into action. Just like Odysseus’ trick to gain access to Troy, semiotic signs can also hide in plain sight ready to pounce. Semiosis remains dormant until activated by our audience.

What suddenly turns a visual element into something meaningful? Some of you may see this as a metaphor for duplicity and sneakiness. In Homer’s stories the existent Trojan Horse was Odysseus’ trick to capture Troy. But I am not storming a city here. When I invoke the Trojan Horse metaphor I use it in the context of one thing primed to reveal itself as really another thing. Semiotic signs are always initially perceptually dormant but in plain sight. Encoded signs can only be activated by the audience’s perception.

Like the Trojan Horse, any encoded semiotic sign-action is initially dormant. The encoded semiotic signs in your visual language will always be in plain sight to the audience. The audience will be unaware that it is meaning-bearing until they trigger the sign-action. Then, like the ancient Greeks in Troy, semiotic signs spring into meaning-bearing action. This moment of audience perception does not change the design or illustration (the Trojan Horse still remained a wooden horse after Troy’s sack).

Once perception is sprung in the audience’s mind, they interpret what they see as instantly possibly familiar to something they already understand. The visual element that has been perceived in your visual language, now begins to mediate suggested existent things. In your final aesthetic work, your audience interprets meaning from the visual language you decide to use. These visual meaning-bearing elements are semiotic signs. You have facilitated a semiotic dialogue, which subconsciously triggers your audience to initiate their perception of the encoded intended meaning.

You creators create the representations of the concept you wish to visually communicate, in the visual language you select. The coordination from meaning-bearing to interpretation is co-created. The way you embed meaning (by representing the concept in your visual language) is up to you. What your audience interprets depends on their lived experiences. Semiosis’ power to encode meaning, and then semiotically release this meaning within your visual language, follows a triadic determination flow.

In designer-centric terms, Peirce’s determination flow follows three steps: concept > representation > interpretation. The latter, if coordinated well, should result in your audience interpreting the concept. However, this is not a single pass around the flow to immediately gain all the meaning at once. Any interpreted meaning grows through many determination flow passes. Each interpretative pass is subconsciously made by the audience, from what you creatives have illustrated or designed.

Once a visual element is perceived as meaning-bearing, all audience interpretation happens in the mind of the audience. For your target audience to interpret the meaning you need them to needs semiotically coordinating. In a designer-centric context, think of this as the “tone of voice” you are conveying in your illustration or design. Your audience’s live experiences (lifeworlds) provides them with the cultural processes to interpret meaning from within an accrued set of reference points to things they already know.

Klaus Krippendorff in his human-centred design book The Semantic Turn states, “nobody can control cultural processes.” He is correct. You creatives cannot control what your target audience will or will not use as reference points, from which they form interpretations. However, Semiosis has your back. While you cannot control what your audience will understand, you can discover what cultural reference points will be mutually understood. A working Hypothesis will help you here.

This is where the coordination of meaning is shared between you creatives and your target audiences - even if you never actually speak with them. Your visual language is the bridge between the concept your client wants you to visually communicate AND semiotically mediating the latitude for your audience to interpret THAT concept. This latitude of the interpretation of the representation is subtly mediated to facilitate the audience to subconsciously make many interpretive passes of your representations. These single hits of meaning are called Sinsigns.

Obviously we are talking about connotative meaning here, a subtle layering of messages to be constructed by the audience. This is dependent on their commitment to build this understanding, from their interpretations of what they see visually represented. How much of this messaging is conveyed is controlled by semiotic signs. The semiotic sign-action only begins when the audience perceives a visual element as meaning-bearing. This is controlled by the weakest level of semiotic signs - qualities - which trigger possibly familiar hints at deeper meaning.

If subconsciously triggered, this instantly begins the audience to begin interpreting. What keeps the audience actively engaged in building meaning, is then semiotically controlled, by visually mediating the audience to suggested existent things they already have experience and knowledge of. 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.

The coordination from meaning-bearing to interpretation cannot be done by you single-handedly. You need to understand your audience, to then coordinate your visual language decisions on how to visually represent the client’s concept. You need audience involvement. We already have many Semiosis 101 episodes unpacking the ‘Logic of Design’ - Peirce’s Abductive reasoning - so check out that playlist (see link in description). This is a form of logic that, paraphrasing heavily, is based on a present truth which can evolve once more is discovered.

Peirce also calls Abductive reasoning a Hypothesis. Any creative can create a working Hypothesis about your target audience with minimal of information. Ideation can quickly begin, and sketched ideas can develop and visual language decisions can be iterated with each new piece of audience information you add to your Hypothesis. You can think of this Hypothesis as the development of a persona to help you attune your client’s concept into visual language your audience will find familiar.

These qualitative clues connect your visual language to your audience’s lived experiences. It is in this way, with a small simple change to your semiotic mindset, you can strengthen how you visually communicate complex messages. Complexity is built from simpler elements, and more complex semiotic messaging is constructed through layering and nesting semiotic signs, from mere ephemerally weak qualities, up to more complex messaging.

I talked earlier about how semiotic sign-action instantly begins after a visual element is perceived. This begins with ephemeral visuals qualities which only offer possible familiarities to things known to the audience. This instant commencement of audience’s interpretation is what Peirce refers to as a Qualisign. A Qualisign instantly gives way to mediation. Semiotic mediation takes three classes of semiotic signs to build the meaning. If a Qualisign is possible familiar instant, then mediation semiotically builds on this to deliver meaning.

Mediated semiotic signs are classed by Peirce as Sinsigns - single deliveries of meaning. As soon as a simple quality is perceived as meaning-bearing then the mediation semiotically works on what the audience first finds possibly familiar. Then as they begin to build their interpretation from mere qualities, their perception of the visual entity moves from possibly existent to then suggested existent. In clearer terms, the audience’s interpretation moves semiotically from possible connections, to firmer suggested connections to something they can actually name.

In the next episode we will explore this in more depth, so remember to subscribe to Semiosis 101 to be notified when this next episode is published. Or become a Semiosis 101 Producer on Patreon and watch all future episodes months ahead of YouTube …plus other exclusive Patreon-only video content.

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