Design, Semiotics, Anticipation

From the Why semiotics? question to the specific aspects of the semiotic underpinning of design the journey is one of discovery. Indeed, design is discovery, i.e., it is anticipation-driven. Therefore, nothing qualifies as its foundation. Design as a process does not require secure preliminaries (theories) from which to set out. It does not require a “place to stand,” a necessary reference, from which to start the adventure. Design assumptions are by their nature questions guiding anticipatory action. They are circumstances of conf lict (the old, the current, the new), which semiotics registers very much like a seismograph. The “earthquake,” i.e., the creative design, is not the graph of the Earth shaking, but a new landscape. The interruptive character of design inquiry, i.e., its disruptive nature, is especially significant when subjected to the après-design analytic moment. This is when recursive definitions (of aesthetic nature, semiotic, economic, cultural, political, etc. significance) are used as a metric of design, creating the illusion that they can become some norm. Actually, design creates a context for meaningful interactions. Design’s self-motivating nature of inquiry escapes such exercises. The activity called design is constitutive of the new, not the celebration of the past. Therefore, we present not only what has so far been learned from a design informed by semiotics, but also what might better serve designers in the context of the rapid change we experience in our days.