Comparative ethno-graphics
Mar. 4th, 2006 05:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHow was it for you? is a little project I did in Osaka for the AIGA Journal, Voice. I wanted to snap some photos of Japanese store-front signs and then have a Western person and a Japanese person compare notes on the
associations and meanings of the signs. Who better to do this with than Hisae, who has a BA in Graphic Design from Central St Martin's in London?
So one evening in January, as dusk was falling, we took a tram to Abiko, a peeling, charmingly shabby district in the south of the city. Here, in a shopping arcade, we found a fairly typical cross-section of signage from the last three or four decades. I snapped photos of the more interesting displays. Then, back at Tennoji, the Westerner and the Japanese
sat in a cafe comparing notes on what we'd seen. The article records the conversation we had when we asked: "How was it for you?"
Despite the apparent simplicity of the format -- pictures run in-line with text, and two people commenting -- the Voice found this a bit of a challenge to run; they don't usually mix text and images, preferring to put "Fig. 1" thumbnails off to the side. (It's surprising how often visually-oriented websites have problems with visuals. If it's not some clunky, idiosyncratic Flash site that repels any new challenge to its own visual supremacy, it's a parsimonious pixel allowance on photos, like Design Observer's apparently arbitrary 356-pixel limit.) Anyway, despite giving AIGA's designers some headaches, the article got the best response of any I've written for the Voice. "More articles like this!" came the cry.
And, lo, more articles like that there were. First, in the AIGA Voice itself, a week or so later, came Beneath the Surface: Iran’s Graphic Design Evolution. Then, this week, came Handwritten Japanese Fonts in PingMag. It's almost like a new field suddenly emerged overnight. What shall we call it: Comparative Ethno-Graphics? Cross Cultural Free-Associative Design Studies? We could set up new departments at design schools, financed by World Design Tours in which people pay to travel somewhere exotic with us, walk up and down arcades taking snaps of the signs, then sit in cafes analyzing the results -- and examining the associations of their own cultural subconscious, bien sur -- over coffee and cup-cakes.
Hey, not a bad retirement plan, that! I mean, this art lark is too good to last...
associations and meanings of the signs. Who better to do this with than Hisae, who has a BA in Graphic Design from Central St Martin's in London?So one evening in January, as dusk was falling, we took a tram to Abiko, a peeling, charmingly shabby district in the south of the city. Here, in a shopping arcade, we found a fairly typical cross-section of signage from the last three or four decades. I snapped photos of the more interesting displays. Then, back at Tennoji, the Westerner and the Japanese
sat in a cafe comparing notes on what we'd seen. The article records the conversation we had when we asked: "How was it for you?"Despite the apparent simplicity of the format -- pictures run in-line with text, and two people commenting -- the Voice found this a bit of a challenge to run; they don't usually mix text and images, preferring to put "Fig. 1" thumbnails off to the side. (It's surprising how often visually-oriented websites have problems with visuals. If it's not some clunky, idiosyncratic Flash site that repels any new challenge to its own visual supremacy, it's a parsimonious pixel allowance on photos, like Design Observer's apparently arbitrary 356-pixel limit.) Anyway, despite giving AIGA's designers some headaches, the article got the best response of any I've written for the Voice. "More articles like this!" came the cry.
And, lo, more articles like that there were. First, in the AIGA Voice itself, a week or so later, came Beneath the Surface: Iran’s Graphic Design Evolution. Then, this week, came Handwritten Japanese Fonts in PingMag. It's almost like a new field suddenly emerged overnight. What shall we call it: Comparative Ethno-Graphics? Cross Cultural Free-Associative Design Studies? We could set up new departments at design schools, financed by World Design Tours in which people pay to travel somewhere exotic with us, walk up and down arcades taking snaps of the signs, then sit in cafes analyzing the results -- and examining the associations of their own cultural subconscious, bien sur -- over coffee and cup-cakes.Hey, not a bad retirement plan, that! I mean, this art lark is too good to last...
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-04 12:35 pm (UTC)i would consider romaji a fourth, no less japanese than the other three, writing system. particularly in signage it's been in use for what? way over 100 years
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-04 12:50 pm (UTC)What was I singing in that video?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-04 12:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-05 03:47 am (UTC)live at soap i think. couldn't really hear the song coz of the rustling crowds. video projections on and behind you. looked very cool.
roma(n)ji
reducing, over-associating, romaji to (j)english gets my alarm bell going. romaji predates and survives (j)inglish.
Decorative or "associative". get your point but not sure if accurate unless taking an exotic and/or historical view (even if only to the point, say, where sony, national etc were writing their logos in katakana).
GINZA (and any shop/logo/context it may appear) is probably more semanticaly accurate than 銀座 and has been for a long time. GINZA or 銀座 subtly connote quite different things and the difference is semantic.
Even in the turn of 20th century dureresque Kishida Ryusei paintings now shown at the Berlin-Tokyo show at oooo oo hills the use of romaji while decorative is semantic.
To me it's a quantitative distinction 100 vs. x00 years.
there is yet another side where for legal purposes HIS say has to be エイチアイエス - romaji not allowed in legal paperwork.
still find it fascinating seeing the names of certain places, say 東京 新宿 渋谷 , kanji which have immense auras, reduced and flattened to mere text とうきょう、しんじゅく、しぶや on signs in the respective stations.
have a suspicion that the attrocities of jinglish might also have partly to do with the convoluted nature of the english language itself.