Free Semiosis 101 Transcript 4.16:

Semiosis 101

26 Nov 2025 — 7 min read

How Can CREATIVE Messaging be Semiotically Mediated to an Audience?

Hello readers.

In this free transcript for the episode 4.16 published on Semiosis 101 on Weds 26^th November 2025, we focus on semiotically retaining audience attention AND mediating meaning. So, how can Semiosis help you mediate to your audience… to improve how they semiotically interpret your intended meaning?

Remember we are discussing connotative and denotative visual communication here. Before any meaning can be semiotically interpreted, the audience has to first perceive that a visual element, within plain sight in the design or illustration, is meaning-bearing. Then, within the framework of Semiosis, meaning is at a semiotically weak possible familiar instant level.

This instant moment of interpretation is referred by Peirce as a Qualisign. Once perceived as meaning-bearing, the audience’s interpretation is… well, let’s see shall we?

Watch the free episode on YouTube for the full impact…

…and here is the episode’s transcript.

How Can CREATIVE Messaging be Semiotically Mediated to an Audience?

In design or illustration, your target audience already know stuff. They have experience of stuff. Your primary audience have a lived experience, a lifeworld if you like. They are your knowledge agents. Once you have the audience’s attention, you can reference their stuff in your visual language to semiotically impart deeper meaning back to them. Let us get mediating, eh?

As far back as season two, we explored how Semiosis at its simplest semiotic power can help you to ‘hook’ your audience’s attention. However, Semiosis can also help you to retain your audience’s attention through your aesthetic. Then with retained attention, you can then semiotically mediate deeper meaning to be perceived and interpreted.

In this 16th episode of Semiosis 101’s season four, we focus on semiotically retaining audience attention AND mediating meaning. So, how can Semiosis help you mediate to your audience… to improve how they semiotically interpret your intended meaning? As far back as episode 2.17, I introduced the persona design tool into your semiotic toolbox. I am not directly discussing co-design methods here, but I will certainly be crossing over into wider co-design techniques to help you develop semiotic narratives.

In the previous episode using a Peircean semiotic lens, I explained how your target audience begins to interpret meaning from your visual language. Remember we are discussing connotative and denotative visual communication here. Before any meaning can be semiotically interpreted, the audience has to first perceive that a visual element, within plain sight, in the design or illustration, is meaning-bearing. Then, within the framework of Semiosis, meaning is at a semiotically weak possible familiar instant level. This instant moment of interpretation is referred to by Peirce as a Qualisign.

Once perceived as meaning-bearing, the audience’s interpretation is mediated across three semiotic sign classes. This mediation moves their perception of the visual language from possible familiar of something they may recognise, to possible existent where they begin to form connections to actual things they know. The final semiotic mediated stage now suggests existent connections to things the audience already has knowledge of, to move their interpretation closer to the client’s concept.

How can you semiotically represent the client’s concept in your visual language, so that your aesthetic mediates the intended concept to your target audience? To discover and ideate the most effective visual language requires you to understand what your audience has experience of. Abductive reasoning, in the form of a working Hypothesis (referred to as the ‘Logic of Design’), helps you to achieve that.

An audience persona is an excellent design tool which can help you personify your understanding of your audience’s lived experiences. By building audience personas, you can focus their lifeworld into a handy guide to represent the client’s desired concept in your illustrations or designs. A persona that details what your audience, from their lived experiences, will already understand and connect with your client’s concept, will benefit your visual communication.

We use the term ‘tone of voice’ a lot, but this is a visual communication problem to solve rather than just linguistically. As Semiosis is pragmatic and not linguistic semiotics, it can aid the crafting of your visual language through more active visual hooks to create visual mood, personality, emotional cues, and a visual scene-setting from mere qualities, to coordinate the audience’s interpretation where we need them to be.

We creatives cannot control the target audience’s cultural processes they use to interpret. However, with your understanding of the audience’s lifeworlds, drawn from using a Hypothesis of what they know and distilled into a persona, you can facilitate their perception. The audience lifeworld persona goes hand-in-hand with how you then can semiotically mediate them in your aesthetic to the intended interpretation.

In Peirce’s phenomenological explanation of the states in which we experience, possible qualitative familiarity is in a state of Firstness. Whereas, as the audience becomes mediated and draws on their lived experiences to help them interpret what they see, the suggested existential connections are in a state of Secondness. Full meaning is only agreed in this highest state which Peirce names as Thirdness. Here the audience’s understanding is at a general level, where the visual language’s meaning is resolved as a proxy for the concept.

This highest level of semiotic meaning is delivered at an agreed level, a general socio-culturally resolution that when the audience sees X, it IS a proxy for Z. This highest level of semiotic delivery spans six classes of semiotic signs. The power of these final six out ten sign classes nest lower semiotic signs within them. This helps you as an illustrator or designer once the audience’s attention and engagement has been mediated, to begin to extract the intended concept from what they see, to reinforce that visual communication of the concept. Let me explain.

The audience’s interpretations are strengthened, as their perception of what they see represented in the visual language, are in a way rechecked, although the audience is now confident they understand the concept being visually communicated. The audience is expectant they agree what is being visually communicated connotatively, however the semiotic signs help them subconsciously to double-check their interpretations. This agreement level is socio-culturally learnt. Peirce calls this delivery of agreed meaning as a Legisign - Legi- as in law.

Within these sign classes, the semiotic signs facilitate the audience to move from qualitative possible/familiar interpretations, to mediated interpretations from possible/existent to suggested/existent. Once the audience are able to interpret agreed meaning at these levels, they are ready to agree what they see are now proxies for the concept. To interpret at this highest level, their perception moves from the possible, through the suggested until they socio-culturally learn to resolve what they generally perceive is the concept. 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.

So, all that theory is nice. Well done me, but how do you enable that perception?

Let us return to our audience persona, abstracted into a personification of what your target audience already understands. If you want to connotatively visually communicate your client’s concept through your aesthetic, then qualitatively understanding what your audience generally associate with that concept will be beneficial.

Yes this persona is drawn from what your working Hypothesis reveals, through employing Abductive reasoning. This second-order thinking approach of what your audience qualitatively associates, with what you need to visually communicate, affords you insights to hook and retain attention. Thus aligning their interpretation with your intended concept. The semiotic audience persona does not focus on market-eese demographics, rather it focuses on your audience’s qualitative associations they already have to your intended concept. This is essentially providing you with a semiotic narrative to see how they will probably interpret.

Klaus Krippendorff makes several useful statements about narratives in the creative process. To quickly paraphrase Krippendorff observes that “narratives are human creations and so is design.” Narratives are “essentially cooperative constructions,” “told in the expectation of being understood,” and enable “narrators and listeners to make sense of their worlds.” By constructing a qualitative audience persona as a semiotic narrative, you create a general narrative to help yourself “make sense of their worlds.” In doing so you are re-calibrating your ideation prep through another small development in your semiotic mindset.

As I have said earlier, you may never meet your audience to interview them. Rather through research AND Abductive reasoning (the ‘Logic of Design’) you are qualitatively inquiring into what lived experience insights you can semiotically ‘hack.’ These qualitative insights can enhance your visual language. Your creative ability to visually communicate, with even a few qualitative insights from your audience, will benefit your visual language choices.

Whereas previously you may have selected a certain colour palette from personal preference, a distilled semiotic narrative can reveal subtle socio-cultural nuances that will enhance audience perceptions. If not colour, then line, shapes, textures, etc. I am focussing on your initial visual communication building blocks that when composed build more complex meaning. In the next episode, we will explore this theme further.

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