Semiotics: The Locus Model’s Visual Language

Systems Economics Lexicon · Loci, Systems, Semiotics & the Theory of People

Every economic classification system needs a way to be read, not just written. Most settle for tables and codes. The Locus Model built an entire visual language instead — the Locus Visual Language — where shape and color aren’t decoration but a second, parallel encoding of the same functional logic the written notation carries.

Shapes: circles and squares

The Locus Model’s basic elements — activities, resources, and Economic Systems — are each represented by simple geometric forms. Circles represent activities. Squares represent resources. The choice isn’t arbitrary: these primitive shapes are graphically simple enough to combine into complex visuals while staying legible, the same way the written notation builds thirty-six activities out of four phases through repeated subdivision.

The circle carries a second meaning beyond activities alone — it’s also used to represent work groups, which are whole systems in their own right. That overlap is deliberate: it visually expresses the fractal structure running through the whole model, where the same shape can represent a single activity or an entire system depending on the level you’re looking at, “as above, so below.”

Color: a fixed coordinate system for activities

Activities carry color the same way they carry a numerical code. Phase 1 is anchored to red, and from that anchor, the Activity Cycle follows the natural progression of a standard color wheel — red, yellow, green, blue — through the remaining phases. Every phase and every activity within every phase gets a unique color coordinate marking both its overall position and its relative position within the cycle. It’s a second notation system running parallel to the numerical one, not a replacement for it.

The colors aren’t just assigned — they’re built to reflect the same relationships the Activity Cycle Relationships describe in writing. Complementary colors mark activities that are functionally similar but sit in different phases — the same activities the Complementary Relationship connects diametrically across the cycle. Analogous colors mark triads of closely related activities sitting next to each other — echoing the Order and Subdivision Relationships. And every .2 or .*.2 activity — the central activity of its division — keeps the same color as the broader activity it’s central to, visually reinforcing the pre-/central-/post- structure the Modifier Relationship describes. The color system isn’t a separate design layer bolted onto the Activity Cycle; it’s the same structural logic, rendered visually.

Color: a categorical system for resources

Resources use color differently — not sequentially, like activities, but categorically, reflecting the fact that resource categories are types, not positions on a cycle. Structural Resources (People, Space, Equipment) get darker, cool colors — purples, blues, greens. Supporting Resources (Information, Money, Energy) get brighter, warm colors — reds, oranges, yellows. That split maps directly onto the Structural vs. Supporting Resources distinction: resources used directly get one visual register, resources that enable that use get another.

Staging follows the same logic that governs the written notation: each stage is represented by a square sized relative to the stage before it, and every substage within a stage keeps that stage’s color, since — as the source puts it — no substage is more representative of a stage than any other.

What “semiotics” means here

Worth being precise about scope: “semiotics,” “semantics,” and “syntax” are general linguistics vocabulary, not vocabulary the Locus Model originated or can claim as its own — they’re established terms this system applies, the same way any field applies general-purpose words to its own subject matter. What’s actually distinctive is the specific visual system this chapter documents: the particular mapping of shapes to model elements, and the particular color-wheel logic tying resource and activity colors back to the Activity Cycle’s own structural relationships. That system is what’s worth understanding here — not a claim on the word “semiotics” itself.

See also: The Four Activity Cycle Relationships · Structural Resources vs. Supporting Resources

Part of Loci, Systems, Semiotics & the Theory of People, course 3 of 7 in the Locus Theory series. For the full term-by-term specification, see the Lexicon.