Origin
Maybe it came from realising that other countries actually have young adults with a sense of national belonging, pride and heritage, maybe it stems from the deep longing for designs with historical context, relation to artistic and cultural heritage, intensive research and thought behind them after a long time of trend based designing, but who knows. Dissecting how our cultural and national identity is created, especially through language and visuals is something that I’ve been interested in for the past months and years, and is promising to be an interesting field of research.
Defining terms
To be able to research design in context of historical and cultural heritage, first one needs to define what is meant by cultural heritage. UNESCO defines cultural heritage as » include[s][ing] artefacts, monuments, a group of buildings and sites, museums that have a diversity of values including symbolic, historic, artistic, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological, scientific and social significance.« (Source)
A similar term that showed up in initial research and brainstorming was national identity, which is generally understood to be either the identity or sense of belonging of a person in relation to the nation or state (or multiple). This includes not only geographic aspects but also culture, language, politics, symbols, and the history of a nation. The development of national identity is either seen as historically founded and strictly kept, or as continuously developing depending on politics and the changes in society. (Source)
Additionally a person’s identity can also be related to their ethnic and cultural identity, which can coexist or rival with the national identity. Cultural identity relates to a person’s beliefs and values, their moral concepts and their norms of life. Aspects that could influence a person’s cultural identity are their gender, sexuality, and race. Cultural identity is a contributing factor of which groups we feel a part of, and in return the groups we participate in influence our cultural identity. (Source)
Continuation of thoughts
To be a part of any of these identities, one would assume that they need to be communicated first, through specific imagery (thinking of specific styles of images like soviet propaganda for example), colours (thinking of national colours and flags), fonts (seeing how much a shared language contributes to the sense of identity and belonging, the depiction of it must also matter) and symbols (communicating identities and movements to others easily through widely known symbols, icons and signs) and probably more nuanced elements that relate to the cultural and national heritage. Which is where design comes in.
Prospects
As one might conclude, this opens up a gigantic realm of possibilities, where the fields of theoretical research might connect to the practice of design. This, so far, leaves a lot of possibilities to dive into, either in an artistic, social studies direction (visually supporting cultural movements and groups for example), or a more marketing based direction of redesigning brands with cultural heritage or influencing peoples sense of pride and patriotism.
