Talking to a client, he said that he had been told that semiotically red, white and blue together in equal quantities was playful, and trivial. "It makes you think of flags", he said. And I thought -huh! Flags are serious things. Flags are symbols of nationhood, identity, cultural reference. Whether you like it or not, a county has a flag and it is used to reference the whole entity, not to trivialise it. I agree that when you think about it there are a whole lot of flags that are made up of red, white and blue but I wonder what the French would say if they were heard that their flag was trivial. Rather puts the French Revolution in perspective. I know as well how much talk there was in Germany before the WM when everyone suddenly started putting up German flags again, a sight that hadn't been seen for over 60 years. And visiting Berlin was bizarre.
It really brought it home to me that possibly semiotics is increasingly being used as a prescriptive tool to guide design. That is fine if it's done for the case in point but not as massive sweeping generalisations. Not everything that is tall and sticks out of something is a phallus. Also it makes me think again about the challenge that I've always had back from people about semiotics - but how do I know it's true? The truthful answer would have been you don't but how do you know anything is true. How do you know that a creative director is really any good - because everyone says he is. How do you know that a brand is telling you the truth about their products? because there are supposedly laws in place. In both of these examples there are things to fall back on. With semiotics there isn't. You have to trust your instinct. Because that's what it's all about - instinctive and cultural reactions to the things around us. And maybe about having the guts to trust your instincts.
Sorry, this started off talking about flags and got slightly off track.