I’m cofounder of the semiotics-fueled branding consultancy SEMIOVOX, editor of the consultancy’s eponymous website, and I’m the “convenor” of SEMIOFEST SESSIONS. Here’s a round-up of what we’ve been doing for the past three months…

Also see: SEMIOVOX 2022 | SEMIOVOX 2023 | SEMIOVOX 1Q2024 | SEMIOVOX 2Q2024 | SEMIOVOX 3Q2024

SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS

SEMIOVOX’s methodology provides insight and inspiration — to brand and organization strategy, marketing, design, innovation, and consumer insights teams, as well as to their agency partners — regarding the unspoken local/global “codes” that help shape perceptions of and guide behavior within product categories and/or sociocultural territories.

During 4Q2024, our projects included (but were not limited to) the following.

• SOPHISTICATED WHOLESOME CODES. We continued to consult — the client is a videogame company developing a stylized game — on Sophisticated Wholesome codes. The project involved closely analyzing many videogames, movies, TV series, vinyl figurines, and more. Game character and world design.

• OUT-OF-HOME COFFEE CODES. Via the UK-based design-, semiotics-, and anthropology-driven agency Visual Signo, on behalf of an instant coffee brand we conducted an analysis of US out-of-home coffee brand communications. Semiovox was the US partner in an ambitious fifteen-market audit. Marketing optimization.

• BRITISH ICON CODES. Via a UK research and strategy agency, Semiovox analyzed iconic British figures — from the worlds of music, movies, fashion, sports, and beyond — in order to surface and dimensionalize British Icon codes.

TEACHING & SPEAKING

This Fall semester, I returned to RISD as an adjunct critic in the Masters of Industrial Design (MID) program. I co-taught two sections of GRADUATE THESIS MAPPING & NARRATIVE.

(Here’s my faculty page.)

Shown above: RISD MID students in the studio.

In October, I was a guest critic for Tony Leone’s graphic design class (theme: zines) at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt). Shown here: A “Mothra” zine in progress.

SEMIOFEST SESSIONS

I’m cofounder of and “convenor” for  SEMIOFEST SESSIONS , a monthly-ish series of online get-togethers — put on under the aegis of Semiofest — intended not only to share best practices among, but to nurture collegiality and friendship within the global semio community. Here’s the 4Q2024 lineup:

• OCTOBER: ON COLOUR. Lucia Laurent-Neva invited color experts and theorists from outside our own discipline — Alexandra Loske, Pete Thomas, and James Quail — to share their insights on how colour systems reflect evolving social and cultural dynamics; how the ‘materiality’ of color connects with broader historical contexts and design practices; the cultural biases and commercial interests involved in color naming; and more.

• NOVEMBER: JURI LOTMAN. Maarja Ojamaa invited Max Matus, Maria Papanthymou, and Auli Viidalepp to discuss how key concepts — including the “semiosphere,” cultural “unpredictability,” and the “growth of meaning” — of the University of Tartu’s Juri Lotman (1922–1993) can inform applied semiotic work around branding, public education, artificial intelligence, and more.

• DECEMBER: COMMUTATION TEST. When we swap out a marketing campaign or brand’s signifiers for close alternatives, which signifiers are revealed to be meaningful… and which meaningless? Ludmila Lacková Bennett invited semioticians from various fields to discuss the “commutation test,” an overlooked methodology from structural semiology that could prove a useful tool for commercial semiotics. 

SEMIOVOX.COM

I’m the editor here at SEMIOVOX, our consultancy’s eponymous website. Here’s what we published during 4Q2024.

MAKING SENSE WITH… is a series of Q&As dedicated to understanding what makes semioticians tick. I’ve asked my commercial-semiotics colleagues from around the world to answer a set of leading questions. Here’s the 4Q2024 lineup:

YOGI HENDLIN (Netherlands/USA) | RAHUL MURDESHWAR (India) | MARTA PELLEGRINI (Italy) | KARIN SANDELIN (Sweden) | JOËL LIM DU BOIS (Malaysia) | KATRIN HORN (Austria) | FRANCISCO HAUSS (China / Mexico) | MARIE LENA TUPOT (USA) | INKA CROSSWAITE (South Africa / Germany)

Coming up in 1Q2025:

MICHELLE FAN (Taiwan) | KRZYSTOF POLAK (Poland) | ASHLEY MAURITZEN (England) | JIAKUN WANG (China) | BRIAN KHUMALO (South Africa / USA) | HABIBA ALLARAKIA (Saudi Arabia) | SHION YOKOO (Japan) | SIXIA LIU (Canada).

The CASE FILE series — the contributors to which are commercial semioticians from around the world — shares stories of things we were amazed and amused to learn, whether or not they proved useful to the client. Here’s the 4Q2024 lineup:

Mariane Cara (Brazil) on MOTHER-PACKS | Whitney Dunlap-Fowler (USA) on WHERE THE BOYS ARE | Antje Weißenborn (Germany) on KITSCH | Chirag Mediratta (India) on “I WATCH, THEREFORE I AM” | Eugene Gorny (Thailand) on UNDEAD LUXURY | Adelina Vaca (Mexico) on CUBAN WAYS OF SEEING | Lucia Laurent-Neva (England) on DOLPHIN SQUARE | William Liu (China) on SCENT FANTASY | Clio Meurer (Brazil) on CHOCOLATE IDEOLOGY.

Coming up in 1Q2025:

Samuel Grange (France) on SWAZILAND CONDOMS | Serdar Paktin (Turkey/England) on KÜTUR KÜTUR | Ximena Tobi (Argentina) on SLUM PANDEMIC | Maciej Biedziński (Poland) on YOUTH LEISURE | Josh Glenn (USA) on WESTERN SPIRIT | Martha Arango on M | Chris Arning on X | & more.

SEMIOVOX cross-posted three installments from a HILOBROW series of mine dedicated to 20th-century pop-culture frogs (which served at the time, in my analysis, as symbols of “too-muchness”). Here’s the 4Q2024 lineup:

MR. THE TOAD | PEACE FROGS | JEREMIAH THE INNOCENT

Previous POP BESTIARY series: OWL | BEAVER. Also: MICKEY MOUSE.

SEMIOVOX continues to offer glimpses into various audits we’ve done via installments in the long-running series CODE-X. Series installments from 4Q2024 include:

HONORING TRADITION (JAPANESE COFFEE): DISCERNING EYE | REFINED PROCESS | CLASSICAL JAPONICA | MIDCENTURY KNOW-HOW | BRITISH RITUAL | HAPPY DAYS. NO RULES (CANNABIS): MAXIMIZED | SET YOURSELF FREE | WEED CULTURE | JUST KIDDING. AMERICAN WEST: SUBLIME NATURE | WILD HORSES | AGAINST ALL ODDS | NEW DUDS | SMOKY SOUL. & more.

Also see: SEMIOVOX updates from 2022 | 2023 | 1Q2024 | 2Q2024 | 3Q2024

MIT PRESS: RADIUM AGE

I’m the founding editor of the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE proto-sf reissue series.

During 4Q2024, I collaborated with the MITP production team send the following Spring 2025 titles to press:

• J.D. Beresford’s The Hampdenshire Wonder (March 2025, with a new introduction by Ted Chiang). “Extravagance… but of so remarkable a character that it keeps you almost spell-bound. What follows is philosophy, psychology, poetry, allegory, what you will.” — The Bookman (1911) | See this title at the MIT Press website.
• John Taine’s The Greatest Adventure (March 2025, with a new introduction by S.L. Huang). “A mixture of H. Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Roy Chapman Andrews, and a bottle of excellent gin.” — California Tech (1929) | See this title at the MIT Press website.

More RADIUM AGE series updates: 2022 | 2023 | 1Q2024 | 2Q2024 | 3Q2024 | 4Q2024

HILOBROW

HILOBROW is SEMIOVOX’s sister website. Here are a few semio- and cultural analysis-related series and posts from 4Q2024.

During 4Q2024, I wrapped up SCHEMATIZING, a series via which — over the course of 50+ installments — I attempted to depict the intellectual and emotional highs and lows of developing a semiotic schema.

SEMIOPUNK is an irregular series dedicated to surfacing examples (and predecessors) of the sf subgenre that HILOBROW was the first to name “semiopunk.” Here’s a sampling of the 4Q2024 lineup:

Iain M. Banks’s FEERSUM ENDJINN | Grant Morrison’s run on DOOM PATROL | Philip K. Dick’s THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH

More HILOBROW updates: 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 1Q2024 | 2Q2024 | 3Q2024 | 4Q2024

On to 1Q2025…