The CODE-X series catalogs a vast codex of source codes (aka “signs”) extracted from past audits.

The object of study in semiotics is not the signs but rather a general theory of signification; the goal of each “audit” is to build a model demonstrating how meaning is produced and received within a category or cultural territory. Signs on their own, therefore, only become truly revelatory and useful once we’ve sorted them into thematic complexes, and the complexes into codes, and the codes into a meaning map. We call this process “thick description”; the Code-X series is thin description.

“VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY” NORM: Celebrating the merchant traders who first carried Jamaican rum to the rest of the world.

“VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY” FORMS: The romance of capitalism — the brand’s story is about how we came to Jamaica, extracted a resource, and made it amazing via our own processes. Sailing ships.

From a 2019 study of the COLONIAL JAMAICA space — in which rum brands unapologetically boast about creating extraordinary rum from Jamaican raw materials.