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.

Berlin…

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?

ALICE SWEITZER

As cliché as it may sound, I remember watching Schindler’s List at a very young age and suddenly understanding the power of symbolism — the red coat against a black-and-white world made that abundantly clear. From there, it became a habit: seeing the plastic bag in American Beauty not just as trash, but as something reaching for transcendence; the hedge maze at the end of The Shining as a visual metaphor for madness and entrapment; the green face in The Mask as pure cartoon Id, unleashed. 

I didn’t have the language yet, but I was already decoding things — reading images, spotting patterns, sensing when a prop or camera angle meant more than it let on. I didn’t have many friends in my small town, so after school and extracurriculars, I’d head to the local movie rental store and challenge myself to pick out something unfamiliar — foreign films, old classics, anything that felt like a puzzle waiting to be cracked.

SEMIOVOX

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

ALICE SWEITZER

I started sharpening those instincts more formally during my master’s in human geography and urban planning. Through this research, the world became legible in a new way. Zoning laws aren’t just bureaucratic — they are tools of storytelling. I began researching how a monument’s placement could signal imperial legacy (hello, central Paris), or how the prohibition of neon in quaint seaside towns wasn’t just aesthetic, but a performance of nostalgia for tourists. In the Emirates, the skyline of star-chitecture isn’t just futuristic — it’s theatrical statecraft, projecting ambition to the world. These are all emotional texts — where street furniture, shadows, and building heights all worked together to script behavior, movement, status, and even desire. And of course, these choices aren’t just symbolic — they shape foot traffic, business clusters, investor interest. The atmosphere of a place can directly influence who spends time there, and who spends money.

SEMIOVOX

How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?

ALICE SWEITZER

After earning my master’s, I didn’t go into city planning or urban design. Instead, I landed a role managing Kantar’s Streetscapes network — an insights platform that brought together cultural reporters from around the world to supplement Kantar’s survey data. The name itself felt fitting: culture happens in the streets, not in spreadsheets.

What I quickly realized is that urban planners and brands actually think about a lot of the same things. Planners anticipate shifts in how families live or move through space to shape the housing of tomorrow; marketers study those same cultural undercurrents to design products, campaigns, and retail experiences. It’s cultural strategy — just with different KPIs. That overlap is what pulled me into semiotics. I still think about cities constantly, and I’d love to do more work in place branding and destination strategy — especially projects that bridge emotional meaning with economic momentum.

SEMIOVOX

What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?

ALICE SWEITZER

Curiosity! That’s it. That’s the job.

SEMIOVOX

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

ALICE SWEITZER

• [British architectural writer] Paul Dobraszczyk’s Animal Architecture. Thinking about how human spaces are designed for and against creatures, and how animals create their spaces. It opens up a completely different way of seeing structure, function, and even power — how environments shape behavior.
• China Miéville’s The City & the City. A novel that explores cultural codes. It’s about two cities that physically overlap in the same space, but their citizens are trained to “unsee” each other, operating in completely different realities with different customs and behaviors. It’s a commentary on a lot of things, including how much of what we accept as ‘real’ is just learned perception.
• Werner Herzog’s Conquest of the Useless. A diary that made me think more poetically, which is nice.

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?

ALICE SWEITZER

I usually start with something simple: “You know how a red baseball cap means something totally different now than it did ten years ago? That’s semiotics.”

Most of my clients aren’t skeptical — they already understand that culture is everywhere, from the shape of a bottle to the color of a bank card. They just want a sharper lens for reading it and a more strategic way to respond. I use semiotics to help brands make more culturally intelligent decisions — whether that means evolving a tone of voice, rethinking packaging, or anticipating how a trend might shift before it hits the mainstream.

Semiotics isn’t a replacement for brand strategy — it’s what helps a strong strategy land with more clarity and resonance. 

SEMIOVOX

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

ALICE SWEITZER

Most of my semiotic work involves brand messaging — from copywriting to creative campaign design, and it’s great. But semiotics applied to product and interaction design is what really toots my horn. 

One example that I’m big on is food coloring in product innovation. When several cereal brands experimented with removing artificial dyes to appease health-conscious parents, sales plummeted. Kids rejected the duller bowls, not just because they were less fun, but because humans instinctively associate bright, saturated colors with nutrient-rich flavors. The most successful innovations across the CPG food sector usually have coloring attributes that are not only healthy but sometimes also functional; food scientists are finding healthier ways to bring vibrancy back — because color will always matter.

I’m also fascinated by semiotics in UX design, especially in making AI services and robotics feel more intuitive for users. There’s a reason consumer-facing robots have eyes, outfits, or even tails — and why people name their Roombas. We instinctively anthropomorphize technology to make it more relatable. The same logic applies to brand storytelling: just as messaging uses a distinct tone, every touchpoint — digital or physical — needs to align with a brand’s broader semiotic values. Haptic branding, for instance, is getting attention these days, and I’m on board with it!

SEMIOVOX

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

ALICE SWEITZER

Some people still question the value of semiotics. The biggest critics don’t see the ROI — but the data is there. A/B testing, social listening, and other accessible tools consistently prove its impact, even on tighter budgets. It’s not everything, but it’s not nothing either. Semiotics helps explain how brands become culturally resonant — iconic, literally and figuratively. And yes, that translates to sales, if that’s the main KPI skeptics are worried about.

What concerns me more is the opposite problem: when brands rely too heavily on programmatic insights and outsource strategy to AI. Sure, data is cheap — but when your content, tone, and visuals start to feel generated rather than intentional, consumers notice. Algorithmic content might attract eyes (mostly bots), but it rarely builds trust, emotional connection, or, as Gen Z would say, real vibes. And again, real vibes drive real sales. So while the market might fluctuate, I’m not too worried. People still want meaning. And meaning isn’t something you can automate.

SEMIOVOX

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

ALICE SWEITZER

Stay curious forever! 

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 global semio series: MAKING SENSE (Q&As) | SEMIOFEST SESSIONS (monthly mini-conferences) | COVID CODES | SEMIO OBJECTS | COLOR CODEX | DECODER (fictional semioticians) | CASE FILE | PHOTO OP | MEDIA DIET.