Design directed by emotional content can be regarded as the heart of current design practices, research, and education. In the arousal of an emotion, sensory perception plays an important role. Our senses perceive perceptual elements, and our brain interprets them, transforming the signals into sensations, emotions, thoughts, and actions. This semantic system uses images, sounds, materials, smells, to convey meaning, with the patterns of these non-verbal elements being recognizable to the intended audience. The processing of sensory stimuli, however, is a complex issue that covers various sciences. A knowledge the designer usually does not have access to. There is a need for a manageable tool to deal with the design of meaning.

The Semantic Color Space addresses this need. It offers a logical classification framework that clearly and conveniently articulates the relationship between meaning, emotion and elements of visual language. A tool that closes the gap between a concept, value, identity and a semantically and affective corresponding visual, tactile, or auditory elaboration.

The model was developed by the Belgian semanticist and mathematician Ferre Alpaerts and design researcher and teacher Inez Michiels, during over 30 years of study and testing. The Semantic Color Space describes universal features of visual and auditory language and connects these with cultural and individual aspects of signification, using a classification structure that closely parallels how the brain works. The model’s human-centered architecture is founded on scientific research within the fields of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, evolutionary biology, and anthropology. The Semantic Color Space is the application of a new method to human expression and meaning, wherein signs are considered neurophysiological and evolutionary products.

Through its specific spatial architecture with opposites, dimensions, and levels of complexity of meaning, a concept or keyword can be precisely understood for every stakeholder in a design team, and associated design elements can be attributed. Moreover, the method provides designers with convincing scientific justifications of their creations.

As such, The Semantic Color Space not only enables unprecedented creative insights and solutions, but also offers a powerful analysis tool, both for design and for design research. The Semantic Color Space is particularly effective for detecting and analyzing semantic relationships, as it allows for the study of similarities, differences, and oppositions down to the smallest signifiers, such as color and shape parameters.

In the articles published on Design Semantic Stories, diagrams and codes are used to clarify these semantic relationships between concepts.

In the following chapters we will systematically explore the architecture and functions of the Semantic Color Space as a classification framework, and the scientific studies that support it.