Cultural Amalgamation and Inclusivity in Typography
Description
Graphic Design is a human centered service-oriented profession where designers have a greater responsibility to be culturally aware, understand diversity, inclusion, and social constructs to create designs that are authentic and relevant to the multicultural community we serve. It is imperative that practicing designers and design educators adopt new methodologies to address cross-cultural learning since we live in a global society. Firstly, we need to understand our cultural identity, heritage and norms before we can appreciate and respect other cultural identities.
As a graphic designer and cultural researcher, I started the Deepavali card project in 2018. The project celebrates my bicultural identity, my Kannglish (Kannada, native language + English), and the Sanskrit mantras (verses) from various Upanishads (scared texts), which are spiritual aphorisms promoting peace and harmony. I have been exploring Kannada letter forms (derived from ancient Brahmi script) to depict the mantras combined with Latin letter forms to denote and unravel new meaning. The cards are mailed to peer designers, friends and family across the globe before Deepavali. The project has prompted new questions and interests amongst my peers as they engage in diverse traditions and with my cultural hybridity.
As a graphic design educator, I was instrumental in establishing a 3+1 Program with a University in Shanghai. The cohort of students will study three years in Shanghai before completing a final year at our University. Selected students will be arriving to our campus this summer. How can we prepare our students to embrace Chinese students, their accent, language and cultural norms? How can we address stereotyping and marginalization of American and Chinese cultures? I had the privilege to teach Typography, and Special Topics in Graphic Design in both countries. Students created Designing Authenticity: Shanghai-Normal, a typography based project which aimed to raise cross-cultural awareness through the design of letter forms.
This paper will present my Deepavali card project, and my student project Designing Authenticity: Shanghai-Normal. I will share my creative and teaching methodology involved in transcultural practices of typography. By questioning the value and meaning of the Western cultural dominance in language, these projects transcends the Latin typographic periphery through adaptation to bicultural environments.
Takeaway
Through my self-initiated Deepavali card project, I will be sharing my cultural heritage and my desire to hold on to the cultural history for future generations to embrace. I will be discussing about cultural shifts, stating examples of Western cultural dominance, and the challenges in keeping my language alive while living in the West. The goal is to bridge cross-cultural gaps by discovering the beauty and respect in other cultural identities living in the United States.
Our University has embraced Learning and Scholarship, Diversity and Inclusion, Respect, Collaboration, Individualized Attention, Civic Engagement, Integrity as its core values. Among them, Diversity and Inclusion, Respect and Integrity are much needed ethics in today’s global community. As the University welcomes more international students, it’s critical that the campus community becomes educated and promotes cross-cultural education and understanding. The session will also describe innovative teaching methodologies, share student research writings, images and learning outcomes. The Designing Authenticity: Shanghai-Normal project helped students in China to appreciate and reflect upon their cultural identity, while students in the United States acknowledged their biases and gained new understandings of another culture.
Abstract
Graphic Design is a human centered service-oriented profession where designers have a greater responsibility to be culturally aware, understand diversity, inclusion, and social constructs to create designs that are authentic and relevant to the multicultural community we serve. We need to understand our cultural identity, heritage and norms before we can appreciate and respect other cultural identities.
Living as an Indian-American balancing my bicultural identity, I question the understanding and acceptance of my cultural amalgamation. Does my adopted country truly grasp everything my culture has to offer? The practice of Yoga, the celebration of Holi (Festival of colors), and now Divali (Deepavali) has been added to the romanticized and exotified list. Several multinational corporations encourage the celebration of the holiday at the workplace, but is their list of holidays inclusive enough so employees may request to take time off without using their vacation days to celebrate Deepavali as a religious observance with family similar to Thanksgiving or Christmas? Deepavali, row of lights in Sanskrit, is a Hindu festival symbolizing the spiritual celebration of light over darkness, truth over falsehood and knowledge over ignorance, and beginning of the new year in several parts of India. The United States Postal service issued a Forever stamp to commemorate the festival in 2016, and President Obama started the tradition of celebrating in the White House in 2009. Several countries have recognized the festival as a national holiday. According to the recent 2018 census, the Indian diaspora in the United States is the largest than in any other country.
As a graphic design educator, I was instrumental in establishing a 3+1 Program with a University in Shanghai. The cohort of students will study three years in Shanghai before completing a final year at our University. Selected students will be arriving to our campus this summer. How can we prepare our students to embrace Chinese students, their accent, language and cultural norms? How can we address stereotyping and marginalization of American and Chinese cultures? As the University welcomes more international students, it’s critical that the campus community becomes educated and promotes cross-cultural education and understanding. I had the privilege to teach Typography, and Special Topics in Graphic Design in both countries. Students created Designing Authenticity: Shanghai-Normal, a typography based project which aimed to raise cross-cultural awareness through the design of letter forms.
The paper will describe my creative practice, and innovative teaching methodologies involved in transcultural practices of typography. By questioning the value and meaning of the Western cultural dominance in language, these projects transcends the Latin typographic periphery through adaptation to bicultural environments. I will share and discuss student research writings, images and learning outcomes. The Designing Authenticity: Shanghai-Normal project helped students in China to appreciate and reflect upon their cultural identity, while students in the United States acknowledged their biases and gained new understandings of another culture. The goal is to bridge cross-cultural gaps in our community by discovering the beauty and respect in other cultural identities living in the United States.