I started using Peircean semiotics in order to understand the development and design of new signs. Especially signs of a mixed character, i.e. text and image. As a consequence understanding the processes that are involved in understanding the production of signs and the realisation of intentions are stessed more than the interpretation of already existing signs or sign usage.
A designprocess may be taken as a prolonged argument in which the initially formulated goal plays an important part as final cause. This argument in its turn consists of smaller arguments of which the intermediary products are the temporary conclusions. The final product is the final conclusion of the argument. During this process many signs are produced that candidate for the finish. Among those candidates are substantially different proposals and, after a while, also variations on a theme. A great number of considerations is made during this process of generating and eliminating signs. These considerations concern the composition of the sign in itself, the way the sign represents its objects, the ways the sign addresses the interpretants and the relations between these three aspects.
Investigation of design processes has many advantages. The main advantage being that the designer is making choices between the candidates for the finish. If everything goes well, these choices are founded on the presumed effectivity with which the pre defined goal may be realised, i.e. on a taxation of the way in which the process of semiosis will be executed in the receiving party and of the results this process will generate. The translation of design processes in semiotic categories will result in a test of the semiotic theory at hand and will show the shortcomings in a rather precise way. This is based on the hypotheses that the designer will reject solutions because they do not give rise to the desired process of semiosis or, in other words, score different in the sign scheme.
A comparison of the ways in which the intermediary signs score in the scheme necessitates a detailed administration in order to prevent the mind from getting lost in the huge amount of distinctions. It is at this point that Axon may prove fruitful as a modern, objectivated variant of the age-old memory technique.