Lucia Laurent-Neva
Design Semiotics is a specialised approach that combines the rigour of design analysis with the richness of cultural insights from semiotics offering advice on how to create cultural relevant designs, as well as to enhance and explore brand design equities. It is driven by the application of theory and technical knowledge intrinsic to design helping brands to understand their different design systems and allowing them to create robust design languages that connect with consumers and their cultural realities. Undoubtedly, it helps brands to stay one step-ahead from their market competitors and visual trends.
It works by uncovering the distinctive layers of information present in products and communications which is highly relevant for brands to be able to understand the different semantic dimensions of design experiences. Design Semiotics deconstruct hidden and visible design grammars that can lead to detection of visual problems and understand products deeper.
This tool is not only limited to the analysis of communications, it also encompasses product design, digital and spatial experiences as well as covering the emotional qualities of design and the analysis of different user interactions present in design objects. It brings a critical-neutral eye to the design analysis helping to rationalise cultural and visual complexity, minimising inconsistencies, and more importantly, working as a bridge between designers, brands and consumers. It is an approach that helps to engage brands with cultural contexts and their different design dimensions. It opens directions to global and local brand programmes.
Design Semioticians are always thinking about the relation between form, message, and functionality, particularly when brands need to take their offer across different cultures. Some of the questions our clients tend to ask revolve around shapes, colours, materials, typographies, among other elements and how these work in relation to production and consumption practices. They want to know how different design elements are adjusted to a specific cultural context or category. How form constructs meaning in a specific culture and how is it different from other cultures? Are product grammars aligned to category messages? What type of design signs are they sending to what type of consumers? Or simply understand why a product is not working from a design and cultural viewpoint.
Design Semiotics as an opportunity to inspire, innovate and compete
We have been using Design Semiotics as an instrument to help brands to understand their own visual systems as well as to provide a diagnosis on their design problems. We have also used this approach to semiotics to initiate conversation around innovation as well as helping brands to make their design experiences relevant to the different markets they operate.
Understand the health of their brand systems
Design Semiotics is valuable to identify and locate problems and symptoms of visual impurity, graphic dilemmas and design ambiguities. It helps companies to have a clear diagnosis of how their brands are working across different touch points at both visual and cultural levels.
We worked last year on a project for a quintessential British brand in the luxury body care market which was looking to expand to other categories and countries. Their strategic objectives required a clear understanding and definition of the brand internal systems as well as understanding how these systems worked in relation to the concept of gifting. After deconstructing the visual DNA of the brand, we found that although the brand was highly recognised for some of its visual elements such as logo, bottle shapes and materials used in their outer packaging, there was still work to be done in relation to the internal design vocabularies as these were minimising the uniqueness of the brand. The structured layouts, shapes and colour combinations used by the brand were almost identical to their main competitor and leader in the category. The concept of gifting was not aligned to the design principles of precision, attention to detail and sensoriality which are key to survive within the luxury segment. The design codes were reinforcing the idea of mainstream rather than luxury, positioning the product in the wrong consumer segment.
As a result, the brand went through a ‘cleaning’ process, the packaging systems were revised to be in agreement with the discourse of luxury gifting, (especially as the brand was highly popular in the Middle East and East Asia) and retail touch points were being considering even more. The different design insights were integrated into the business to inform brand identity, product development, retail experience and tone of voice across the whole brand system.
Be culturally design aware
Product language is always understood in the realms of cultural interpretation. Design Semiotics connects with consumers, cultural contexts and products via the invisible structures that operate in design. The way different consumers around the world interact with objects always reveals extra layers of information. By identifying local and global design parameters, we advise in the creation of designs that conform to current and future cultural codes connecting with specific cultures.
Recently, we worked on a project for a global tech brand studying the design and cultural cues of premiumness in five different countries across Europe, Asia and Latin America. The brand wanted to position themselves as number one choice in the premium market and for doing that they needed to clarify the different visual and cultural codes of premiumness.
We uncovered the different visual narratives that are critical when communicating premiumness across these markets. We found that ideas of durability, authenticity, precision and sensoriality are common ground when communicating premiumness globally, the way design provides an emotional reassurance in relation to these concepts varies significantly across markets. The square-ness of a box might have different meanings across different countries, a cardboard is a cardboard but a 1 mm less or 1 mm more can create a different effect from one country to another. Although the codes detected in the premium space can be globally executed, certain aspects of design need to be localised to create more effective campaigns.
The distilled information presented new potential design codes to explore, as well as making evident the design disparities present in the brand product range in relation to the design grammars of premiumness as well as local interpretation. We tailored these results to each country and provided a global viewpoint on design equities for the brand. As a result they are revising and innovating on materials and finishes for both packaging, product and consumption experiences.
Pushing product innovation
In recent years design thinking has been centre-stage in the global language of branding and innovation allowing brands to talk about the intrinsic value of a product as well as its intangible elements. Design Semiotics helps companies to articulate brands across different design dimensions, challenging them to improve their design weaknesses and inspiring a constant innovation.
Design Semiotics is not only being used by gigantic corporations, we have also worked with small and medium companies interested in innovation practices. An example of this comes from an event company recognised for organising product innovation events across America and Europe, they asked us to revise their current brand systems in relation to the design language of innovation, especially around their PLM (Product Life Management) offer.
In the PLM category, visual signifiers tend to operate within the business language of innovation reinforcing a corporate culture of innovation via use of blue, images of bulbs, hands, and shapes such as squares, triangles and arrows. The design discourse of innovation definitely was lacking innovation!. We wanted to take them away from a rigid, mechanical and squared space owned by the vast majority of innovation brands by showing them visual evidence that innovation could be challenged too. We helped them to move out from an innovation space that was visually represented as squared and mechanical to a space that was using organic and simple-complex geometries reflecting the real dialectics of innovation. We developed a brand system that was based on the principles of simple-complexity, formal-informal and movement which allow them to grow and challenge their own innovation concepts.
The brand has now expanded beyond PLM covering other sectors such as Apparel and Design innovation. They are constantly using design semiotics techniques to push themselves to think about innovation from a design and cultural perspective.
Opening collaborative practices
It is not unknown in commercial environments that designers and semioticians normally work in ‘silos’ which have limited the channels of communication and potential strategic opportunities. The evaluation of design products, communications and brand systems is commonly being carried out by designers and cultural insights being executed by semioticians. Although, designers recognise the value of semiotics inputs, they feel sometimes frustrated by the lack of understanding of design language in semiotics recommendations which sometimes create the impressions that Semioticians are more of an enemy than a collaborator.
Semiotics in general is there to generate design conversations not to constrain them. Design semiotics gives practical and inspirational insights to take a product or a concept forward. As one designer put it one day during a workshop “This method has helped me to understand my own work better, it is pushing me to think differently about my own design boundaries”. Design Semiotics help designers to rationalise a process that often comes from intuition creating better conversations between strategy and creative teams.
When it’s time to use this tool
This approach is valuable not only once a product has been released to the market but also during the early stages or during the design process, as it can be used as a tool for evaluation, inspiration and further understanding of cultural & design codes.
It is highly recommended when in need of aesthetic-cultural direction, especially around clarification of culturally challenging ideas and merging meanings, understanding emergent concepts or communicating when entering a new market to avoid cross-overs and re-interpretations. It becomes relevant when thinking of creating new products, communications or just when wanting to fix design impurities.
Design Semiotics will be very helpful to determine the internal failures of a product, pack, and design system or to understand the visual parameters of the category to innovate, helping brand to think about their own design values and be in tune with its strategic principles.
Lucia Laurent-Neva is Founder and Director at Visual Signo. Lucia can be reached at @visualsigno
