About

The Design Semantics Knowledge Graph maps visual sign systems, meaning, and emotional effect, into a coherent, intelligent data network, for the ultimate purpose of creating designs that are meaningful, easy to use, and fascilitating well-being. Watch the sneak preview video below. 

At its core is the Semantic Colour Space (Alpaerts & Michiels, 2021), a ground-breaking design tool that brings together over thirty years of research, creative exploration, and teaching practice into one practical framework to explore the relationship between design elements, meaning, and emotion. Rather than treating visual elements as isolated components, the Semantic Colour Space frames them as interconnected and synaesthetic parts of a semantic system. Grounded in a multidisciplinary foundation and drawing heavily from scientific disciplines, especially linguistic semantics, semiotics, cognitive psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and systems theory, the Semantic Colour Space provides designers with both a conceptual framework and a practical tool to start a design praxis where perception, emotion, and meaning work hand in hand. This approach allows for a move toward a human-centred design, where the main concern is how artefacts are experienced, understood, used, and integrated into people’s lives.

Because keywords and colors are linked by a semantic code, shifts in meaning and nuance can be examined. You can look at how the meaning or emotional effect changes as you make a color darker or lighter, redder or bluer, or what happens when making a shape more angular or upright, etc.  For example, the caring friendliness of pastel rose transforms into a more amicable friendliness when extra red is added. 

Each keyword in the graph and its connection to color and shape have been validated either by research, a scholarly essay or article. Both quote and source are referenced so that a designer can elaborate on their design choices, which is essential when presenting a design to a third party. Using this information, the argumentation as to why a particular color, shape or symbol was chosen, can be legitimately underpinned. 

Previously invisible insights are uncovered with clustering, centrality, and similarity analyses. For example, within a color cluster you can look for the keywords with the most connections. These words can then be interpreted as key meanings for a particular color or shape.

Getting feedback from design professionals is important to us during these early stages of development. If you are a designer, design firm or a teacher at a design academy, college, or university and would like to try the DSK graph free of charge for three months and in return provide feedback to us, then please fill out the participation form.