Tag Archives: product design

Semiotics and Brand Development

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A brand is more than one iconic symbol, it’s a system of interconnected images, actions and signs that create a response in your consumers. While it is often put down to something as simple as logo design (which is anything but simple, in fact), identity and branding work extends beyond the creation of a company logo or trademark. The identity of any particular corporation, product or service encompasses a variety of materials including business cards, marketing materials, staff uniforms, advertisements, commercials, web presence, etc. All of this is created to establish an identity that the consumer comes to value beyond the direct benefits of the company.

A part of establishing the company brand, the identity work is important in conveying the principles, ideas and standards of the organization for which it is developed. Designers work together with strategists, copywriters, marketing directors and a host of other professionals to ensure that a brand identity is communicated effectively and efficiently from the client to the consumer. And in an age of social media and assumed shared interests, the communication is increasingly a multi-faceted conversation.

Most design firms and agencies create branding and identity work for their clients on some level, others specialize in identity and branding only. In any case, brand development involves deep thinking and a commitment to understanding the symbolic interconnectedness of the parties engaged with the brand. This is the art and science of semiotics. But why bother?  There are a number of simple reasons.

Understanding

Semiotics can help you dig into the underlying meanings in communication and establish a richer connection with consumers. On a practical level, a semiotic approach allows you to determine why an ad, a web page or a new product’s design is or isn’t working. It allows you to isolate components, but it also allows you to determine how they work or don’t work in relation to other elements.

Renovation

Over time symbols change and without constant care brands fall apart. A brand can keep making small changes, but ultimately, this process doesn’t work. Eventually you have to strip right back to bare bones and rebuild the brand completely. Semiotics can be used to deconstruct brands and categories, exposing truths that can be used to reconstruct them, and make them stronger.

Articulation

Semiotics can help articulate the problem you actually have, as opposed to the symptom you are trying to address. The approach allows you to move beyond intuition and get to the deeper issues behind what is happening with your brand.

Research

A semiotic approach can help you improve your qualitative work, by helping you redevelop your line of questioning, or listening for different things. Rather than focusing on traditional needs-based questioning and observation, a semiotics approach uncovers deeper issues and subconscious triggers that strengthen the meaning behind the brand.  There is a strong tradition in ethnographic research specifically of employing a semiotic approach.  Both methods are observational and interpretive. Ethnographic research aims to understand what consumers do and why they do it, rather than what they say. In other words, it assumes that human behavior is more complex than what people tell you. Similarly, semiotics assumes that how human beings interact with and understand the world is more than what they tell you.

Briefs

Ultimately, semiotics creates richer, deeper briefs and platforms that creative teams can actually work from. Rather than simply providing data, it provides avenues of expression that the creative team can build upon and use to explore a range of opportunities for communication. It can provide platforms from which to strengthen your communication, be that advertising or design.

Touch It, Design It, Build It

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No one operates with just one sense.   This is fairly obvious at the sensory level where the visual, kinesthetic, auditory, tactile, etc. elements of our world come together to produce bio-cognitive responses.  Something soft, round and red will produce a different reaction than one that is hard, square and blue.  Increasingly there is a recognition in all types of consumer research, from product design to packaging, that there’s are emotional and/or experiential connection that people have with products.  These go well beyond bio-cognitive responses and speak to the symbolic underpinnings of what it is people believe about a product or brand.

Tactile design is, unfortunately, an often overlooked element of design from the semiotic perspective. The value people attach to products or brands has as much to do with how something feels as it does with how it looks or the function it serves. That means that how a package feels in the hands of a consumer can imprint a long-term psychological association not only with the object, but also with the company that makes it.  This means taking a two-pronged approach. One the one hand, you have to explore how context shapes how people understand different materials.  What feels “right” in one setting may not feel as good in another.  Second, you have to understand reactions and associations when materials are experienced in isolation – blind testing where the only sensory input is touch. When relying exclusively on the tactile, the consumer is forced to set aside their sight-based sensory dominance and focus completely on the sensation of touch.

Ergo Chef knives are a great example of this.  Not only they ergonomically ideal tools, the materials used in the handles mimic skin insofar as being soft, but not so like skin that they produce a negative association. Researchers found that if the material was too human-like, if felt “creepy” because it reminded people of host of negative symbolic relationships – associations were made with cannibalism and slasher movies, both of which in turn speak to host of other negative symbolic associations.  Based on fieldwork and testing for symbolic associations with a range tactile experiences, Ergo Chef developed a material that felt comforting, secure and innovative.  In other words, they didn’t just ask if a material felt good, they explored how different materials felt both in isolation and in context, and what symbolic associations could be assigned to the material.

You wouldn’t design a product or package based only on what you hear or see alone.  What seems right in a lab may mean nothing if it loses it’s meaning in a different context.  Looking at the symbolic underpinnings of materials and shapes allows you and a design team to isolate the senses in certain activities and uncover a range of meanings. We gain powerful insights into what people think and feel about the things we build.  That leads to a truly holistic approach to integrating design, marketing and brand.