I’m cofounder of the semiotics-fueled branding consultancy SEMIOVOX, editor of the consultancy’s eponymous website, and I’m coordinator (with Adelina Vaca) of the monthly SEMIOFEST SESSIONS. Here’s a round-up of what we’ve been doing during 2Q2026.

Also see: SEMIOVOX 2022 | SEMIOVOX 2023 | SEMIOVOX 2024 | SEMIOVOX 2025 | SEMIOVOX 1Q2026.

SEMIOFEST WARSAW 2026

Since the beginning of the year Ramona Lyons and I have been developing and play-testing a semiotics-driven puzzle-game — currently titled Semio Squad: Frontier Planet. On May 22, we debuted the game at Semiofest Warsaw. We were thrilled with how well Semio Squad was received by our colleagues.

Ramona and I are grateful to the dozens of helpful folks who play-tested Semio Squad before we arrived at Semiofest. And also to: Lucia Laurent-Neva (England), Marina Machauer (Germany), Jiakun Wang (China), Adelina Vaca (Mexico), Rob Drent (Netherlands), Charles Leech (Canada), Marta Hoffmann (Hungary), Vivianne Hiriart (France), Sundari Sheldon (USA), Paulina Goch-Kenawy (Poland), Aikaterini Zompanaki (France), Alice King (Australia), Oana Cândescu (Romania), Sam Roller (USA), Emily Hayes (England), Akvile Sataite (Mexico), Katalin Wundke (Germany), Giacomo Festi (Italy), Phil Wyckoff (USA), Alec Kozicki (Estonia), Tânia Furtado (Portugal), Enya Trenholm-Jensen (Germany), Krzysztof Muszyński (Poland), and everyone else who participated in our “ludic” workshop.

We’re also grateful to the organizers of Semiofest Warsaw, for inviting us to run a workshop.

More photos of our workshop — titled VISCOSITY TEST — here.

SEMIOFEST SESSIONS

I’m the founder and co-convenor of SEMIOFEST SESSIONS, a monthly-ish series of online get-togethers — put on under the aegis of the biannual Semiofest conference — intended not only to share best practices among, but to nurture collegiality and friendship within the global semio community.

As of July 1, I’ve stepped back from coordinating the Sessions. To that end, since last summer I’ve collaborated on organizing this series with Adelina Vaca, a colleague from Mexico. Going forward, Ade will take over.

Here’s the 2Q2026 lineup:

APRIL: SEMIOTIC TATTOOS. Tattoos can be considered “meaning-making” tools that assist us in managing our personal narratives. For this unusually revealing, even intimate show-and-tell session, I invited Aarushi Chadha (India), Whitney Dunlap-Fowler (USA), Su Luo (Taiwan), Max Matus (Mexico), Alexandra Ncube (England), and Sundari Sheldon (USA) to discuss the meaning — personal, political, social, cultural — of the symbols that they’ve had inked into their own flesh. 

These tattoo stories and many others were first published here at SEMIOVOX.

MAY: FESTSCHRIFT FOR MALCOLM. A “Festschrift” is a collection of essays written not about, but in honor of a distinguished scholar, and presented to them in person by their colleagues and former students. Semiofest’s FESTSCHRIFT FOR MALCOLM session honored the pioneering contributions of Welsh semiotician Malcolm Evans via brief presentations on the current and future status of biosemiotics, semiotics for social good, semiotics around the world, and more — including life after semiotics.

I was eager to convene this session before stepping back from my session-convening role, since Malcolm has been a mentor and friend to me since the early days of my career in semiotics.

JUNE: VISCOSITY REDUX. “Viscosity” was the theme of this year’s insightful and inspirational Semiofest gathering — convened in Warsaw from May 20–23. For those who were unable to attend, the Semiofest Warsaw team were pleased to extend the conversation online, offering a chance to experience the spirit of the conference and its key ideas. They warmly invited us to join a session whose presenters explored price anchoring in the alcohol category as a function of viscous meaning codes, the notion of discursive viscosity as a condition for the emergence of truth, and more.

Coming in 3Q2026:

Pierre Lee will host the session SEMIOTICS & FOOD | Sarah Johnson will host the session DOING SEMIOTICS IN NORTH AMERICA.

All SEMIOFEST SESSIONS here.

SEMIOVOX.COM

I’m the editor here at SEMIOVOX, our consultancy’s eponymous website. Here’s what we published during 2Q2026.

I also enjoyed working with big corporations on telling stories to drive activity concerning social good activity before much of that got put on the back burner, if not taken off the stove altogether. I was never under any illusions that a lot of this would not be jettisoned should the Trumpists be seen to win the cultural conversation, but I worked with lots of very committed people fighting to make progressive organisational changes in their workplaces and in many instances they were successful. This is something which the justified criticisms of corporate purpose as a branding exercise have a tendency to overlook.

Al Deakin

MAKING SENSE is an ongoing series of Q&As dedicated to understanding what makes semioticians tick. I’ve asked my commercial-semiotics colleagues from around the world to answer a set of leading questions. Here’s the 2Q2026 lineup:

MARINA MACHAUER (Germany) | AL DEAKIN (England) | SEBASTIÁN MORENO (Uruguay) | XAVIER POUGET (France) | ILARIA FORTE (Germany) | CHRISTOPHER RYLES (Finland) | PIERRE LEE (Canada) | ALEXANDRE DIDIER (France) | CRISTINA VOTO (Italy).

Coming in 3Q2026:

KRZYSZTOF MUSZYNSKI (Poland) | FRU BEKEFI (England) | ENYA TRENHOLM-JENSEN (Germany) | MAITREYEE PATKI (Singapore) | NIMESH NAMBIAR (UAE) | & others…

All MAKING SENSE installments here.

The darkness was no longer a concealment; it was a deep connection.

Tatiana Jaramillo

For the TATTOO YOU series, I asked 25 of our semio colleagues from around the world to explicate the symbolism of… one of their own tattoos. We wrapped up the series during 2Q2026. Here are the final installments:

Serdar Paktin (Turkey/UK) on RESISTANCE & SURRENDER | Tatiana Jaramillo (Colombia/Italy) on EMBERÁ BLACKOUT | Antje Weißenborn (Germany) on FADED STAR | Sundari Sheldon (USA) on SUN | Roberta Graham (England) on SUNFLOWER.GUNMETAL.

On April 2nd 2026, I’d visit New York for the first time. I took a ferry and saw the Statue of Liberty. I had done what my dad predicted and my achievement was symbolized by this giant statue. I experienced numerous strong emotions, in that moment, but chiefly I was content and proud to just stand there, staring at an iconic symbol of New York. The color of which is… teal.

Brian Khumalo

The COLOR CODEX series — to which we have invited our commercial / applied semiotician colleagues from around the world to contribute — explores the unexpected associations evoked for each of us by specific colors found in the material world. Vol. 1 was published in 2023–24. We kicked off Vol. 2 in June. Here’s the 2Q2026 lineup:

Brian Khumalo (South Africa / USA) on STATUE OF LIBERTY TEAL | Madoka Suganuma (Japan) on BLOSSOM PINK | Susan Bell (Australia) on THAILAND TURQUOISE

Coming in 3Q2026:

Rajan Luthra (India) on AMALTAS YELLOW | Carla Moss (Austria) on EASTERN BLOC GREY | Dora Jurd de Girancourt (France) on JACARANDA PURPLE | Alexandra Ncube (England) on PMDD RED | Katrin Horn (Austria) on PIER BLUE | Ľudmila Lackova Bennett (Czech Republic) on BARBIE PINK | & others.

Like subsequent sf authors, including Neal Stephenson and Ted Chiang, Delany depicts language as determining thought and experience. He is playing out the dramatic implications of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — the idea of linguistic relativity. The structure of a language determines a native speaker’s perception and categorization of experience; the language you speak constrains what you can know, believe, and even perceive.

Josh Glenn on Babel-17

SEMIOPUNK is a series I’m writing, cross-posted and revised from our sister site HILOBROW, which is dedicated to surfacing examples of the sf subgenre that one might call “semiopunk.” Here’s the 2Q2026 lineup:

CAT’S CRADLE | BABEL-17 | ENGINE SUMMER.

Coming in 3Q2026:

UBIK | SNOW CRASH | PATTERN RECOGNITION.

Futura’s letterforms seem cast from perfect pours of Industrial Age steel, forged to sail through to the Space Age. But politically speaking, the aesthetics of efficiency might point either right or left. Futura faced firmly to the left not only by the sympathies of its designer, but by the eccentric height of its lowercase letters, which rise higher than its capitals, a subtle function served by the form. 

Peggy Nelson

KERN YOUR ENTHUSIASM is another series cross-posted from our sister site HILOBROW. Twenty-five creatives were each asked to discuss one of their favorite typefaces. Here’s the 2Q2026 lineup:

Deb Chachra on FAUX DEVANAGARI | Peggy Nelson on FUTURA | Tom Nealon on JENSON’S ROMAN | Rob Walker on SAVANNAH SIGN | Tony Leone on TRADE GOTHIC BOLD CONDENSED NO. 20 | Chika Azuma on KUMON WORKSHEET | Chris Spurgeon on ELECTRONIC DISPLAY | Amanda French on DIPLOMA REGULAR.

Coming in 3Q2026:

Steve Price on SCREAM QUEEN | Alissa Walker on CHICAGO | Helene Silverman on CHINESE SHIPPING BOX | Tim Spencer on SHATTER | Jessamyn West on COMIC SANS | Whitney Trettien on WILKINS’S REAL CHARACTER | Cintra Wilson on HERMÈS vs. HOTDOG | Jacob Covey on GOTHAM.

Also see: SEMIOVOX updates from 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 1Q2026.

MIT PRESS: RADIUM AGE

I’m the founding editor of the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE proto-sf reissue series.

As of Spring 2026, the RADIUM AGE series will publish one title per season (Spring / Fall), for a total of two titles per year. This August, we will publish the following title:

• Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (abridged edition; originally p. 1930), with a new Introduction by Matthew De Abaitua. “The boldest imaginings of Mr. Wells pale before the dreams of Mr. Stapledon.” — Oxford Magazine (1930) “Last and First Men is a seminal work of cosmological SF — a philosophical examination of the future evolution of humanity, inspirational to Arthur C. Clarke and so many of Stapledon’s successors. Great to see it included in The MIT Press’s Radium Age series.” — Charles Stross.

More exciting installments in this series, including anthologies and collections, some of them currently being translated into English, are in the works. For the latest updates, keep an eye on this page.

More RADIUM AGE series updates: 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 1Q2026 | 2Q2026.

HILOBROW

HILOBROW is SEMIOVOX’s sister website. Here are a few semio- and cultural analysis-related series and posts from 2Q2026.

EMANATIONS is a new series of cultural research-and-analysis posts, each of which features 10 of my favorite examples of Radium Age-era fine art exploring a particular proto-sf-adjacent theme. Here’s the 2Q2026 EMANATIONS lineup:

CATASTROPHE: DECLINE & FALL | DYING EARTH | ECO-CATASTROPHE. COSMIC AWE: DEEP TIME | IS THERE LIFE ON MARS | STARS WHEEL IN PURPLE. DEHUMANIZATION: CYBORG MANIFESTO.

Coming in 3Q2026:

DEHUMANIZATION: MECHANIZATION. DISENCHANTMENT / UNSEEN FORCES: ATOMIC SUBLIME | CHROMATIC SUBLIME | DIAGRAMMATIC SUBLIME | GEOPHYSICAL SUBLIME | RE-ENCHANTMENT | SCIENCE FANTASY | STOP MOTION.

As a lifelong storyteller and voracious knowledge junky, I live with thousands of books, many of which feel like dear friends. I read newspapers online and travel with magazines. In reading non-fiction, ideas drift in, lodge as barnacles in the mind, engage with emotions, and eventually come out in stories.

Annie Nocenti

Inspired by the success of the MEDIA DIET series here at SEMIOVOX in 2025, 1Q2026 saw the kickoff of a series exploring the media “input” of a group of people — HILOBROW’s friends and contributors — whose “output” we admire. Here’s a sampling of the MEDIA DIET lineup for 2Q2026:

HOLLY INTERLANDI | NICHOLAS ROMBES | ANNIE NOCENTI | JONATHAN PINCHERA | MATTHEW BATTLES | CAROLYN KELLOGG | GARY PANTER | CHARLIE MITCHELL | JUDITH ZISSMAN | & others.

Coming in 3Q2026:

DEB CHACHRA | GORDON DAHLQUIST | JOE ALTERIO | VANESSA BERRY | MICHAEL GRASSO | DREW DANIEL | & others.

More HILOBROW updates: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 1Q2026 | 2Q2026.

On to 3Q2026…