What makes a semiotician tick? SEMIOVOX’s Josh Glenn has invited his fellow practitioners in the field of commercial semiotics, from around the world, to answer a few revealing questions.

Taipei…

SEMIOVOX

When you were a child/teen, how did your future fascination with symbols, cultural patterns, interpreting “texts,” and getting beneath the surface of daily life manifest itself?

MICHELLE FAN

When I moved to the US from China as a kid, the culture shock was overwhelming. Growing up between the two cultures, I was constantly trying to make sense of my surroundings; at first, I didn’t have any way of articulating the confusion and shock that I was experiencing. My fascination with symbols is rooted in how weird and misplaced I felt in my own context, and my need to understand why.

When I was a teenager, I became obsessed with films. (Some of my favorite films to this day are ones I fell in love with during that period.) Cinema gave me a new language, and later a way to interact with the world of ideas through images.  

SEMIOVOX

Describe your first encounter(s) with the theory and practice of semiotics.

MICHELLE FAN

Like many of my fellow semioticians, I first became aware of Semiotics through an undergraduate course. My big passion at the time was analyzing films and images, so I was excited to find a whole system for interpreting symbols as “texts.”

One barrier for me was that I never felt good at theory. During my undergrad degree, I struggled with understanding film theory — and wasn’t ever sure that I could truly hear or speak in that “language.” Though I’m not a natural, I did improve.    

SEMIOVOX

How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?

MICHELLE FAN

While finishing my Masters (in Global Media and Communictions) at LSE, I was undecided about what I could — or wanted to — do next. A friend who was working in brand strategy at the time told me that “cultural insight” was a thing… and that I should look into it. I started freelancing on a few semiotics projects and it grew from there. I’d end up working for Sign Salad and Flamingo. I’ve been freelancing since 2020.

SEMIOVOX

What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?

MICHELLE FAN

Curiosity — which I’d define as an interest in stretching beyond your existing beliefs about the world. A former colleague used to say that semiotics, like anthropology, was about “making the familiar strange, and the strange familiar.” I agree! For semioticians, the ability to see the weirdness in normality and the normality in weirdness is essential. 

Also: An interest in making ourselves useful. As commercial semioticians, we’re not doing this work to entertain ourselves: We have a business objective, and therefore need to balance interesting insights with usefulness.

Semiotics can seem unapproachable, to outsiders — I’d say that we should develop the ability to use our skills to ‘open a door’ to outsiders.

SEMIOVOX

What three books about semiotics have you found the most useful and enlightening in your own work?

MICHELLE FAN

I don’t read many marketing books. In addition to Barthes’ Mythologies, I might suggest…

• John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. The resounding clarity of Berger’s perspective — and its articulation, in writing — is something to which I aspire.
• W. David Marx’s Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change. I’m reading this book published in 2022. The author is an American fashion and culture writer in Japan. It’s dense, but I love its “status” lens on the drivers of cultural change.
• I loved the recent zine Fan Fiction from [American culture critic] Tavi Gevinson. It’s about Taylor Swift — but beyond that, it’s about what it means, in today’s world, to see and to remember.

SEMIOVOX

When someone asks you to describe what you do, what is your “elevator pitch”? How do you persuade a skeptical client to take a chance on using this tool?

MICHELLE FAN

“I use culture as a tool to help brands be meaningful to people.”

When it comes to skeptical clients, I tend to emphasize the purpose and rewards of the method — i.e., clarity not confusion, simplicity not over-complication, usability beyond interestingness.  

When it’s relevant, I also talk about how semiotics works well in tandem with other methods by digging into the roots of our beliefs, and making these connections in ways that are difficult to articulate off-the-cuff.

SEMIOVOX

What specific sorts of semiotics-driven projects do you find to be the most enjoyable and rewarding?

MICHELLE FAN

I love diving into big cultural ideas — especially ones that I might not have looked into on my own. This can be anything from sports content and the American South to perceptions of Hong Kong, fatness, and k-pop. Bonus if I can work alongside partners in different markets. 

I’m also interested in projects that have some element of social good. I’ve done some public health work in the past, and was fascinated to see how the insights traveled through massive organizations, as well as the potentially huge impact the work could have.  

SEMIOVOX

What frustrates you about how semiotics is practiced and/or perceived, right now?

MICHELLE FAN

Sometimes, commercial semiotics is seen as inaccessible, perhaps more an exercise in ego and performance rather than enriching strategic thinking. But many of us are working hard to dispel these notions, not least because great thinking should be a way of connecting with people and establishing common ground — not building towers that separate you from the outside world.   

SEMIOVOX

What advice would you give to a young person interested in this sort of work?

MICHELLE FAN

I’d just say, “Welcome!”

MAKING SENSE series: MARTHA ARANGO (Sweden) | MACIEJ BIEDZIŃSKI (Poland) | BECKS COLLINS (England) | WHITNEY DUNLAP-FOWLER (USA) | IVÁN ISLAS (Mexico) | WILLIAM LIU (China) | SÓNIA MARQUES (Portugal) | CHIRAG MEDIRATTA (India / Canada) | SERDAR PAKTIN (Turkey / England) | MARIA PAPANTHYMOU (Greece / Russia) | XIMENA TOBI (Argentina) | & many more.

Also see these series: COVID CODES | SEMIO OBJECTS | MAKING SENSE | COLOR CODEX