Semiology
for artists and designers

by Jaime M. Jiménez Cuanalo

prologue by Martha Soto

ZonA
LímitE
 Semiology, for artists and designers

This is a peer reviewed document

Editorial Zona Límite

Escuela Superior de Artes Visuales
are opperated by Arte del Noroeste AC. Non Gouvernamental Non Profit Organizations, devoted
to the promotion of profesionalization, study and divulgation of art, as means to improve quality
of life.

Copyright for the original Spanish version

© 2017 Jaime M. Jiménez Cuanalo
Translation by the Jaime M. Jimenez Cuanalo
Copyright of the English translation
© 2018 Jaime M. Jiménez
All rights reserved.

Cover: Martha Soto.

Illustrations: Jaime Jiménez, Martha Soto, Piergiacomo Maldonado and Salvador León
Coments and suggestions: [email protected]
Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico.
Ph. 52 (664) 680-2640

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the
case of brief quotations embodien in crital articles and reviews, or in academic papers.

Impreso en USA/ Printed in the USA by BLURB.

1. Composition. 2. Semiotic. 3. Semiology. 4. Meaning.

 PROLOGUE

Table of Contents
PROLOGUE ix
I. Introduction 1
What are Semiology and Semiotics? 3
Historical Background 6
The process of semiosis 8
II. General Theory of Meaning 11
Informatic nature of the universe 11
Classification of signals 17
III. Emotive Semiotics 21
Perceptual Field 21
Achromatic Semiotic 27
CHROMATIC SEMIOTICS 34
Basic Typical Effects of Color in Art and Design 40
IV CONVENTIONAL SEMIOTICS 43
Iconic Symbols 44
Linguistic and Graphic Symbols 46
Denotative - Connotative Function 47
Subjective Dimension 48
Conminative Function. 50
Interpretative Function 51
V HERMENEUTICS OF ART AND DESIGN 53
SEMIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS 59
CONCLUSION 64
VI GLOSSARY 67
GENERAL SEMIOLOGY CONCEPTS 73
VII BIBLIOGRAPHY 79
Semiology, for artists and designers

PROLOGUE
Have you ever wondered, why different people see the same image of, for
example, the sad face of a woman from medieval aristochracy in some paint
stains? Or, how can we predict what other people will see in a TV screen and
how will they react to it? Why people from tribes that did not know Western
art’s naturalistic tradition, did not see images of themselves or their village
when shown early black and white photos? What codes must an image or a
building have in order to function properly, be it in advertising or in archi-
tecture? These are some of the questions that students or scholars of the
visual, performing, cinematographic or architectural arts; communication
sciences, graphic or industrial design, etc., pose themselves when sketching
a project; because nobody wants to create a funny image that the audience
percibes as tragic, or a romantic image that the audience percibes as scary,
etc.
This “Semiology for Artists and Designers” course from Doctor Jaime
Jiménez Cuanalo is an excelent tool for students from these fields to be able
to understand the processes of image’s meaning. This course clarifyies how
we use our instincts plus the conventions created from art, to transmit in-
formation codified in artificial configurations. In general terms, it under-
takes in a brief and practical fashion, the maner how semiology explains
how a meaningful value is associated to information. That is, semiology
does not deal so much in what this or that mean; but rather more into, how
or why this gets to mean something for someone? And why –according to
each circumstance– what we try to communicate doesn’t mean the same
to everybody. Or, as the author of this book puts it: “Properly understand-
ing the processes of meaning, is essential for all those involved in the
generation of new codes and artistic languages, and those involved in their
applications made by design and communication”.
Martha Soto
 I. Introduction

I. Introduction
In the last hundred years, one of the most fascinating adventures in the history of
human intellect has been developing –in Western culture in particular–. We are
re-discovering the most powerful invention ever produced by humanity: language.
We say rediscovering it, because apparently we had forgotten that, from our most
remote origins, human beings have been reacting emotionally to the stimuli con-
figurations presented to us by our environment, and we have represented those
configurations by means of artistic forms, later to create a conventional concept
or percept from these forms and have forced these conventions unto matter and
energy, thus creating the ‘things’, so that we may ultimately, in an arbitrary and
conventional fashion, name them. All of this process as a way of taking possession
and dominion over the world; as a survival strategy. This rediscovery is what we
know today as semiology.
This paper constitutes a practical introduction manual into semiology; par-
ticularly as applied to the fields of art, design and mass communication, for stu-
dents of undergraduate or graduate level. This book presents the contents of the
Semiology course given within the bachelor’s and master’s programs in the fields
of art and architecture at the ESAV school in the city of Tijuana, Mexico, based on
the advances of our school in the field of Arsology –art science– developed by our
faculty and researchers.
 Semiology, for artists and designers

The information provided here is, thus, the practical result of our search to
endow future artists and art scholars with an arsenal of basic knowledge about
the signification function [semiosis] of the elements and mechanisms of formal
languages, such as the arts and design. It has no pretense of being an exhaustive
treatise on the subject, but rather to simply facilitate the work of the student or
course teacher.
It must be noted that the rise and development of semiology during the past
XX century, brought serious and contradictory consequences: On the one hand,
th

the discovery that language is arbitrary and conventional –because improper in-
terpretation of this fact –has helped to drive the caving of Western Culture itself. A
culture that, in our time, is loosing coherence because of the gradual substitution
of knowledge by opinion; that is to say, because of the idea that it is all right to sub-
stitute certainty for prestige, as criterion to chose the option of knowledge that is
best to apply in a concrete case. For example, it is common to hear people say “my
opinion is as valid as yours” but, when it comes down to obtaining concrete results,
–in art or design, for example– validity is not a useful, much less practical, criterion
for making decisions. Someone who has not studied medicine, for example, could
say “a medical doctor’s opinion is as valid as mine, to decide if someone needs an
operation or not, because we all have a right to our opinion.” It is clear that apply-
ing the validity criterion here, could bring disastrous consequences. Nevertheless,
it is fashionable and insisted upon –specially in the context of the so called social
sciences and in regards to research on art and design– to invoke the criterion of
validity and everybody’s right to express an opinion, and this is added to the fear
of contemporary experts to give any concrete definition or opinion, as well as the
generalized belief in extreme relativity and subjectivity of language, that makes
impossible any productive theoretical discussion.
But ironically, on the other hand, the rediscovery of the power of formal
communication and the mechanisms of discourse creation made possible by the
development of semiology, has allowed communicators, designers and publicists,
an ever greater effectiveness and precision in the production of imperative and
conditioning type messages.
This has brought with it an unprecedented increase in the power to influence
the conduct of the individual and the trends in society through the media, that to-
day serve our political and economic leaders. So these days, the media creates an
enemy or invents an absurd necessity ‘any day of the week’ and make it disappear
the next day; but we could very well use this very same power and those same
mechanisms, to inform and coordinate society in an efficient and productive way.
 I. Introduction

For all these reasons, it is so important that almost all art, design, advertis-
ing or communication schools include semiology in their curricula. This will allow
the new meaning creators to master the basic elements of semiology, in order to
develop their craft in a manner not just more efficient, but also more aware of its
own power and consequences. But it will also create a divide, making those who
master semiology more competitive, and obsolete those who have not studied it.

What are Semiology and Semiotics?

Semiology. It is the scientific discipline that studies the processes of mean-
ing. The word semiology is formed by the Greek roots semeion=signal or sign, and
logos= thought or knowledge. Semiology is a discipline of study because it fulfills
all the requirements that a discipline of study must have:
• Object of study. Semiology has an object of study that is concrete and
exclusive, different to any other discipline of study and that is, precisely,
‘meaning’.
• Problem of study. Semiology studies the process of meaning as such
and not in any other aspects it might have or share with other phenom-
ena. Thus, the main questions of semiology are: What is meaning? How
does meaning work? And, what effects does meaning produce? –or, in
other words, what does it do.
• Methodology. Semiology subscribes the scientific method.
• Theoretical integration. Semiology already has several researchers
and texts dealing with answering semiology’s questions; so, gradually,
a coherent body of knowledge, made by pieces that complement each
other, is formed.

Additionally, semiology is a science because it fulfills the requirements need-

ed to be so:

• Experimental observation. Semiology does not only think about the

phenomenon of meaning, but rather observes all its aspects and mani-
festations; mainly, it observes its development as a process. Semiology
observes cerebral, evolutionary, behavioral, formal, cultural and other
mechanisms that play a part in the processes of meaning. Moreover, it
 Semiology, for artists and designers

II. General Theory of

Meaning
Meaning, or semiosis, is a process in which a subject associates a perceived configura-
tion –signal– to an evoked configuration –meaning.

Informatic nature of the universe

To better understand the previous model, the first thing we need, is to clearly
understand that, to the extent of our observation abilities, the universe is all made
of information. At a macroscopic level, that is, at the scale or size of things we can
see with the naked eye, information appears to manifest itself as ‘states of things’.
For example, ‘this chair is here’, is a different data than ‘that chair is there’; ‘this
book is new’, is a different data from ‘this book is old’. Any state held by any portion
of the observable universe is a ‘datum’. But the same data can be related in many
different ways; that is, the same things that are in a given place can be arranged in
many different ways. What sometimes is seen above, might later be found below;
what is now joined, might at a different time be separated, etc. We call ‘Configura-
tion’, the exact way in which data is arranged in a given time and place, .
 II. General Theory of Meaning

ple, the experience of facing a dangerous predator, or the experience of de-

tecting ripe fruit. According to the General Theory of Art we have been proposing,
in nature there is nothing but the phenomenon and, only after artistic representa-
cion, it is us humans who create new types of entities we call ‘things’ and ‘concepts’.

For...

...a wolf = dinner

...a cow = obstacle

...a boy = pet

Fig. 4 Salvador Leon. Each configuration means something to somebody.

For example, to the phenomenon of ‘finding ourselves facing a kind of predator’,

we give a name: ‘lion’, and it becomes a thing, and we ascribe to it characteris-
tics such as ‘mane’, ‘claws’, ‘short orange hair’, etc., and becomes a concept.

Semiosis. Nevertheless, one must not confuse the form with the meaning,
since the forms we have set as examples above are abstract or possible concepts,
but cannot exist in reality except when they are what they are for someone. That is,
meaning is a form to someone. For example, to a mouse that chose to live inside the
back of the refrigerator in our previous example, it doesn’t matter how much we
rearrange the furniture, it will never be a ‘furniture store’ or a ‘kitchen’, since none
of these possible forms are a meaning that the mouse gives to those configurations.
 Semiology, for artists and designers

III. Emotive Semiotics

Perceptual Field
In nature, the perceptual field is everything a living being can perceive at a given
time; obviously, the perceptual field follows the subject. If I am in my bedroom, my
perceptual field –what I can see, hear, smell, etc.– is what is in my bedroom, but if I
go out into the street, now my perceptual field is all I can perceive in the street. In
this sense, the natural perceptual field depends entirely from the perceiving sub-
ject’s viewpoint; it’s always changing, and that is why we say that it is ‘open’.
But human beings have learned to create artificial perceptual fields that are
not constantly changing, as the perceiving subject moves and changes. This percep-
tual fields are stable and are bound and fixed by the ‘author’ of the composition, be
it a designer or an artist; and they have the function of creating stable and objective
meanings, outside of the world’s flux and the subject’s point of view, that change
constantly. That is why we say that artificial perceptual fields are ‘closed’. For ex-
ample, by taking a photo, the photographer decides and circumscribes what is go-
ing to be visible from the scene and what is going to be left out of the photograph;
and from where –what point of view– we will be able to see the scene.
 III. Emotive Semiotics

treating, etc. Aesthetic function possesses multiple and complex mechanisms

and aspects, which we will try to explain in a very basic way, below.

Achromatic Semiotic
Like most mammals, human beings have a visual system that perceives the
world in a ‘grayscale’; that is, it only sees zones going from very light –white– to
very dark –black–, going through all the possible tones of gray. That is, we have a vi-
sual system that does not distinguish colors by hue and saturation, just tones. This
visual system is ancient and is adapted to navigate; meaning, to determine where
there are obstacles and where there is passage; to determine whether objects are
close, far, above, below, to the left or the right; whether they stand still or move and,
if so, are they moving fast or slow, towards us, away from us or perpendicular to us.
This means that, in art and design, the way in which we compose –arrange
and distribute– tones, or more to the point, differences in tone, will be very import-
ant in regards to our audience understanding the spatial relationships between the
elements in the composition. A bad tonal composition will make it hard to know
where the elements of our composition are situated in regards to the perceptual
field, the background and each other; or to appreciate and define their mobility.
This is particularly important in spatial or in moving arts and design, such as in
dance, architecture, sculpture, theatre or film.
It is important to point out that, in architecture, tonal composition greatly
influences how the public will use the space; the paths they will walk, the locations
they will choose to stand still, the areas of the space they will enter little or nothing
at all, etc.

Tonal composition will be useful, therefore, to control transit and access of peo-
ple, which can have powerful effects in, for example, sales in a store, since when
people tend not to walk through a certain part of the store, the merchandises
displayed there will probably sell little. Additionally, proper tonal composition
will also be very important if we want the audience to perceive the movements
of a dance or the choreography of a combat in the performing arts. It will also
be fundamental to communicate concepts such as ‘above’, ‘below’ or ‘near’, in
graphic design or visual arts.

Besides these simple aspects, the tonal visual system also identifies what
 Semiology, for artists and designers

take action or not; and finally, things that move fast require ‘urgent atten-
tion’, be them good or bad for me. Of course, as in everything else in semiology, the
explanation is not quite that simple, since speed is interpreted in relationship to
direction, grouping, rhythm and other factors. A few examples following:
• Something isolated, slowly moving away from us in an arrhythmic way,
will be interpreted as possibly being a weak or wounded animal and our
emotive response will be to seize it.
• Something that moves slow, rhythmic, isolated and away from us, could
be a predator paying attention to something else and our emotive reac-
tion will be to stay very still, expectant.
• Anything moving at great velocity towards us, will usually provoke a re-
action to evade, to protect ourselves.
• A big group of elements moving fast in a direction different than ours will
usually give us the impulse to follow, it is the alarm set by the stampede
of people in disaster situations.

CHROMATIC SEMIOTICS
Unlike most mammals, humans and other apes have a second ‘color’ visual
system, that distinguishes hues and saturation in colors, in addition to their tonal-
ity. This visual system evolved much later and has two main evolutive functions; to
identify objects without the need for them to move and to distinguish faces from
different people, as well as discern their diverse emotional states and intentions.
The Light. It arrives to our eyes as waves that can be longer or shorter, and
it may come in only one wavelength or in a mix of sizes; plus, it can come in big or
small intensity. Our eyes have very precise limits; if there is too little light, we see
nothing, if there is too much light, nothing either. Same for the wavelength, we can-
not see light in too short or too long wavelengths.
Hue. Is the wavelength our brain calculates the light we are seeing has and
usually correspond to the main or generic names of colors. The shorter wave-
lengths that we can see are the ones we call ‘violet’, slightly larger they seem to us
‘blue’, ‘green’, ‘yellow’, ‘orange’ and, the longest wavelengths our eyes can see, we
perceive them as ‘red’.
 III. Emotive Semiotics

The ‘colors’ we see in things –a green or red apple, for example– are in reality
the hue or wavelength that bounces of their surface. Our vision evolved to detect
that hue, because it depends on the chemical composition of each thing and that,
in turn, determines in good measure whether something is good, bad or indifferent
to our survival. That is, our eyes did not evolve for color vision to give us a prettier
or a more ‘real’ view of the world; but rather to identify things whose chemical
composition is nutritious, poisonous, available for reproduction, etc.
Saturation. Is the perceived ‘purity’ of the light; that is to say, how mixed or
pure is the light in terms of wavelength? If light comes in only one wavelength, we
see a ‘pure’, ‘colorful’ or ‘intense’ color. If the light is mixed in equal parts of each
of all colors, then we see ‘grays’ –from white to black–. When the light brings one
wavelength in abundance and a little quantity of all others in a same proportion,
the color seems ‘grayish’ and, if the light comes in one wavelength in abundance
but mixed with other wavelengths in different proportions, the color then seems to
us ‘brown’ or ‘dirty’.

grayish green saturated green brownish green

Fig. 21 Jaime Jimenez. Saturation.

Tonality. It is the intensity with which our brain calculates that the object re-
flects the light. If it reflects too much light, the object seems ‘light’ and, if it reflects
too little light, it seems ‘dark’. In the extremes, when the intensity of the light is too
much, it does not matter whether it comes pure or mixed, we will see ‘white’ and,
if the reflected light is too little, the composition does not matter either, we will
 Semiology, for artists and designers

IV CONVENTIONAL
SEMIOTICS

Conventional semiotics are the meanings that arise from a convention –that is, an
accord amongst several people– to associate a sign with a meaning. The sign to be
associated may be any kind of configuration; from one created to one just pointed
out or chosen; from a letter to an abstract figure, to a simplified naturalistic figure.
The meaning may be anything: a thing, an idea or concept, another sign, etc. And
the convention can be tacit –as with the names of things in our language, there was
no vote or express agreement, but we all agree that is the name of things– or the
convention can be expressed –as in espionage and children’s games, where they
agree to a code in order to communicate ‘in secret’.
CONVENTION: Act of will that associates a thing A with another B, for a given
group of people in a determined place and time.

By means of convention, people can create all kinds of codes, using all kinds of
elements. We use drawings (letters) to represent sounds (words) and those sounds
to represent mental images (concepts) and those mental images to represent ex
 V HERMENEUTICS OF ART AND DESIGN

V HERMENEUTICS
OF ART AND DESIGN
Hermeneutics mean, basically, interpretation; and it is the process by means of
which we attribute meaning or signification, in this case, to a piece of art or design.
To comprehend how or by means of what mechanisms or processes our audience
is going to attribute a meaning or signification to our work, will help us to give
our pieces the final adjustments that guarantee their proper reception. Now, even
though the process of interpretation of art and design happens mostly in one and
the same act, at the same time, we can break down the elements that compose it, to
understand it better. Each aspect of the interpretation we will call ‘reading’.
Emotive Reading. The first impact of a composition upon the audience tends
to be subconscious and corresponds to the ERT: Face with each kind of configura-
tion, a human being will have a typical reaction. These typical reactions will be,
in principle, the ones we have inherited in the way of instincts from our ances-
tors, to respond to common or typical phenomena or happenings from their life
in the wild. So, for example, the response to configurations of the kind ‘wildfire’,
‘mate available for reproduction’, ‘imminent storm’, etc., are the strongest and most
immediate. There are also other configurations that evoke or represent internal
states of the subject, more than observed phenomena; instrumental music fre-
quently falls into this category.
 Semiology, for artists and designers

VI GLOSSARY

ART. The process by which human beings create forms, create the artificial. The
process that synthesizes new meanings by manipulating ‘by trial and error’ visu-
al, sound or other kind of stimuli in a sequence of emotive-rational iterations, re-
sultind in the creation of an artificial configuration materialized in a work of art.
This configuration created, has the purpose to be interpreted by emotional-con-
ventional association and transformed into a concept or percept, to then be assim-
ilated into culture by means of further iterations.

Art is informatic and, therefore, virtual, so there is no ‘thing’ that is art, nor is
art in the artist, nor in the audience, nor in the work. As any other information
phenomenon, it is virtual; it manifests itself materially, but is in itself immate-
rial.

As the process arises from non-rational intuition, since its function is to create
the referents for new concepts (that obviously don’t exist nor are available to the
artist), art cannot be thought and then executed, the end result cannot be known
from the start. This is so, because we need conventional concepts or percepts to
think, and that convention cannot be generated without first having a shared ref
 VI GLOSSARY

Semiology
for artists and designers

A practical book, based on the most recent advances of art the-

ory, neursciences and the sciences of sensory perception, that
helps both the expert and the student to have a better contro
over the emotive effects and the behavior produced by any visu-
al composition in its perceiver, be it in architecture, film, graphic
design, theatre, painting or any other visual media.

Jaime M. Jiménez Cuanalo, Doctor in Art by the University of

Guanajuato, he is also a Lawyer by UNAM (National Autono-
mous University of Mexico), Bachelor in Arts by ESAV and Mas-
ter in Education by UABC. He is the creator of Arsology, science
devoted to the study of art. Also a researcher in the fields of an-
thropogeny and the first word, human rights, education, semiol-
ogy, evolutionary behavioral biology and the neurophisiology of
perception.