La semiótica pragmatista como referente conceptual filosófico para un análisis del proceso creativo en diseño gráfico. Un modelo en construcción

Abstract

The creative process in graphic design is responsible for articulating conceptual development, the design approach, and even aesthetic sensibility. This makes it an imaginative and intuitive exercise that simultaneously integrates information related to the designer's personal experiences, the contexts of the needs being addressed, and the specific conditions for presenting the resulting products. Thus, this process presents a link between the sensory and the intelligible, the intellectual and the intuitive, and reflects the characteristics of reasoning that begins with assumptions, anticipations, scenarios, and proposes solutions based on hypotheses. This last concept embodies the essence of abduction: reasoning that, in pragmatism, is understood as that which leads to an explanatory formulation, or that gives shape to a surprising fact and, consequently, to a new idea. Bearing these premises in mind, this work aims to analyze, using an abductive approach and in light of theoretical reflections provided by semiotics and pragmatism, the stages and characteristics established in the creative process of graphic design. The purpose of this analysis is to define the possibilities for philosophical interpretation of this creative process and to provide a foundation that recognizes its power based on the relationship it establishes with experience, error, and anticipation—fundamental notions that underpin the conceptual framework addressed throughout this text. More precisely, this work seeks to understand how Peircean abduction illuminates creative processes in graphic design, thereby demonstrating the application of a classical philosophical framework to contemporary visual communication practices, particularly in light of the increasing centrality of the image in recent decades. To arrive at this understanding, this document is structured in three phases. The first phase carries out a diagnostic analysis that aims to identify: i. Research addressing the relationship between philosophy, pragmatism, creative processes, and graphic design; ii. The history and scope of the definitions of design, graphic design, and creativity, specifically appealing to three approaches to analyzing the creative process; and iii. Conceptual reflection from semiotics and pragmatism, primarily through the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and William James, as fundamental inputs for this proposal. This phase is developed in the first, second, and third chapters. The second phase, corresponding to Chapter Four, presents an analysis that, using specific references and their illustrations, outlines some of the paths taken by the dialogue between pragmatism and the creative process. This aims to establish Peircean abductive logic as a conceptual operation geared towards creation, one that accommodates doubt, habit, and experience. Finally, the third phase, developed in Chapter Five, presents the formulation of the proposal that underpins this work. This inquiry, as already mentioned, seeks to recognize the stages of the creative process in graphic design from a pragmatist perspective. Within this framework, it explains how the concepts of a pragmatist semiotics, incorporating Peircean, Deweyan, and Jamesian input, are linked in a developing model presented from a processual perspective. This proposal is shaped by experiences, thoughts, and beliefs, and is permeated by the implications of novelty as a central axis provided by abductive reasoning.