Applied Semiotics 101
Chris Arning
Do you know your jelly ontology from your hyper redundancy and your meta modernism? Does hanging out with a bunch of sign and culture obsessed ‘semioticians’ leave you feeling almost ‘viscous’ with apprehension? Well, fear not. We’ve just the workshop for you. Unlike other conferences where you are left to wade through the jargon and to fend for yourself, at Semiofest, part of our mission is to increase the accessibility of applied semiotics.
And at Semiofest Warsaw 2026 we have chosen to do that through running an Applied Semiotics 101 where we will go over some basic concepts and core principles of applied semiotics like sign, signifier, signified, symbol, code, myth, binary and the ways in which applied semiotic language intersect with branding language. This will equip you a rough glossary of terms and will allow you to feel more part of the discussion and comfortable decoding the various exciting presentations on offer. This means that without any prior exposure to semiotics, you will to get more out of and savour this event.
This session is run by Chris Arning Co-Founder of Semiofest who runs How to Do Semiotics in Seven Weeks and a man who once stood in the middle of Oxford Circus in London with a sandwich board with the words ‘Time of the Signs’ on it: so he knows how to engage a wide audience with semiotics!
Chris Arning
Chris Arning, previously Head of Semiotics at Omnicom international research agency Flamingo Research; started Creative Semiotics in 2010. Creative Semiotics has conducted over 150 projects for blue chip clients including: Netflix, Paramount Network, Radio Centre Australia Tourist Board, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Kellogg’s, Ricola, Coca-Cola, Universal Studios. Chris has acted twice as an expert witness, including in Estonia and he helped Attorney General’s Office of Massachusetts win a $175 million settlement against Uber and Lyft. Chris is widely published in the press with his articles appearing in titles such as Huffington Post, The Daily Mirror, Admap, Al-Jazeera, WARC, The New European. Chris has previously taught at University of Warwick, and University of Creative Arts and runs critically acclaimed and Continuous Professional Development accredited course How To Do Semiotics in Seven Weeks which now has over 250 Alumni. His book Brand Semiotics in 20 Diagrams is due to be published in 2026. Chris is a Co-Founder of Semiofest.