Intercultural Design Workshop 2022

Introduction

To learn more about intercultural communication and especially visual communication, we joined the Workshop “Signs Go Global”. The theme of this workshop is “Picto or Logo?”. It is divided into two parts. It started with Project A which is about creating an orientation pictogram like a WC sign. The uniqueness of this project is where the pictograms would be used: a culture center for Indonesians and Germans. So the intercultural aspect plays a big role in creating this orientation sign. Our group consists of four people. Two of us are Indonesian students and the other two are German students.

Idea

This assignment project A - orientation signs is about visual communication without using textual explanation. Especially in internationally important locations like airports, people need straightforward and self-explanatory visual references.
We wanted to create an orientation sign such as a WC sign that fits into an intercultural context. In this scenario, it's an Indonesian-German culture center. We also wanted to address the location because the target group depends on it. We mainly concentrated on men and women starting with age 16 from European and Asian cultures. Because it's a culture center, it is mostly visited by people who are interested in intercultural design and want to experience different cultures in the context of art and design. Our pictogram has to meet certain expectations, so the visitors find it pleasing and it fits into the culture center.

Research

We tried to integrate the two cultures without overmixing them together so that people can still see the distinctive influences of where they are from. For the female, we want the pictogram to be influenced by Indonesian clothing, named kebaya, and the male is influenced by German clothing called “Tracht”. To make it minimalistic, we used one focal point for each culture, mainly head accessories. We chose “tusuk konde” as part of the kebaya and “Trachtenhut” for the Tracht.

Intercultural Perspective

A pictogram is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are often used in writing and graphic systems in which the characters are to a considerable extent pictorial in appearance. A pictogram may also be used in subjects such as leisure, tourism, and geography. Pictograms usually can be accepted by the general public, but it’s not uncommon to see pictograms that are influenced by specific cultures and are targeted toward them. Different cultures will use our pictograms. So, we tried to understand Asian and European cultures and how they communicate with pictograms. Through our analysis, we discovered that in Asian culture it's more common to have high contextual design, which means that messages are often implied but not directly spoken. In western culture, this is totally different. Messages often are clear and precise. It is more common to see detailed pictograms in Asia while it is the opposite in the West. Many other criteria made it clear that Western countries are more forward, rational and linear in the pictograms and messages they want to communicate. Eastern cultures tend to be more polite, flexible and emotional. To fulfill the task we tried to combine those criteria up to a certain point and tried to keep the context in mind and keep it mostly neutral.


We have different approaches to the project. The German students like to have a strict agenda. They are very direct in the way they design, therefore they start with scribbles on paper that may look rough. After that they go into the details. Their designs are also straightforward, minimalistic and look very clean. The main focus for them was getting the work done.

The Indonesian students have a different approach. They like to think about it first. After that they love to talk about ideas and get new ones. Also, they like to have many conversations and are very interested. They are very polite in the way they talk and often ask fascinating and important questions. The main focus for them was intercultural communication and getting to know each other.

Indonesian on Germans students It has been such a lovely experience to be able to work and get to know the German team, especially the ones from this group. Even though there was a language barrier between us, we managed to convey every message we tried to send and we finished the project collaboratively. The Germans were quite diligent with our work and pretty skillful in terms of design. They made the assignment less difficult and they were quite reassuring as well. This has been an amazing experience and we’re glad we could rely on each other.


German regarding Indonesian students:
It has been a unique experience to work in an intercultural team. We noticed a difference between working in a German speaking group and in an intercultural environment. Of Course, the communication wasn't totally easy because of the language barrier. Our common language was English. We find it surprising that it is normal for Indonesians to work from everywhere which we could not imagine in Germany. Also, it is very interesting that it's common for Indonesians to speak in a very polite way.

Message

Since our project addresses the visual orientation in a culture center, we want the look, feel and the style to be expressive, avant-garde, and open-minded.
It is clear to us that this should only happen to a certain degree so the meaning of the pictogram is clearly understandable. The main function of the WC pictograms is to help men and women find their specific WC location. This is also our main message. The sign should help visitors navigate through the building and make the gender clear. Other roles and functions are to create a distinctive look and feel that is essential for an Indonesian-German culture center. Both cultures should be represented and therefore respected. This is our secondary goal.

Concept

For our concept, we want our pictograms to be modern, self-explanatory and creative. We need them to be minimalistic so they feel modern and fit into the location of an Indonesian-German culture center. The pictograms also need enough context so everybody can easily understand them. As we stated earlier, a higher-context design is important for understanding visual communication among Asian cultures. That is why we used a lot of geometric shapes and also integrated figurative elements.
Of course, the pictograms should be self-explanatory and easy to understand.

We want the pictograms to be creative because the target group in the Indonesian-German culture center expects this.

The following criteria are important: scalability, conciseness, longevity, simplicity and the long-distance effect.

Design


We designed our pictogram as described in the concept. It was important to keep the message in mind and to integrate Asian and European cultures. As explained, we wanted to make minimalistic pictograms so it has a modern look and feel and fit into the cultural center as a place of innovation and modernity.

We used main lines and geometric shapes to create our pictograms. It contains two figures that symbolize men and women. We shaped the woman like an “X”. The “X” symbolizes the female figure, in this case, the hourglass figure. It consists of one line. We focused on the outline of the letter so it does not feel too heavy because the balance was very important to us, too. The male figure is symbolized through a “Y”. Again because it shows the male figure with wide shoulders.

We discussed if we wanted to give our figures heads. We decided on putting circles on them, so it is understandable that it's not just some characters but abstracted, minimalistic figures. We also wanted to give them more context so that different numerous cultures could understand them.

Furthermore, we believe we have successfully integrated Asian and European cultures into our pictograms with the headpiece designs added to the figures. We looked up different typical and traditional clothing for Indonesians and Germans. We analyzed and compared those different clothes and found out that headgear is significant for these different cultures. We decided to give the female pictogram an Indonesian touch
and the male a German touch through specific headgear designs. That is why we gave the woman an abstracted version of a crown and the man a hat. We mostly used shapes like triangles and squares, but in some designs, we added a hint of abstractness. For example, we added waves to the shapes or just used a few lines so that it has the gestalt effect.

Conclusion


Project A was very interesting because we learned a lot about Indonesian and German cultures and how their visual communication differs from each other. Our intercultural understanding has grown throughout this project.

The assignment included the task to make an orientation pictogram like a WC sign. Mainly it has to be understandable but also the intercultural aspects should be visible. Each culture has its own uniqueness so it was difficult to mix German and Indonesian cultures in a respectful way. In the end, we are all very happy that we managed to combine these two cultures without losing the key points of each culture.

Presentation