London in Prague: 10 days after the workshop on semiotics with Ginny Valentine

We had a great workshop with Virginia Valentine on the 19th of March in Long Tale Café (and in Galery Třeštík).  Semiotics is not an easy discipline and it takes a somebody such as Ginny - real expert in semiotics and also a wise person who understands people - to make semiotics accessible. Ginny has been extremely open - she let us right in the semiotic kitchen which is a brave thing to do.

From the start, Ginny was clear with us as to what we would explore: she has made a division between the semiotics theory (not to be explored at the workshop) and the practice of semiotics in the fields of marketing, advertising  and market research - and it was this part that we have concentrated on during the workshop.  This approach was refreshingly different from the usual academic teaching of semiotics in this part of the world - too much theory and too little practice. 

During the day with Ginny, we have explored and got our hands on number of practical and helpful practices for semiotic analysis - we learned about how meaning is constructed in any form of communication - ads, packs, products.   

Many of us had already intuitively used parts of some of the techniques that we have explored (e.g. the paradox principle) and Ginny has provided us with a great framework and discipline with which we could make our intuition much stronger.  

The workshop was a success also because of the participants - they were truly interested in the subject and did great job at the excersises. Thanks!