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//-->|NEWS ANALYSISIN DEPTHWhen cultures collideWhen a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad there was a worldwide public outcry. We find outwhat the wider creative community can learn from the aftermath of these unfortunate eventsWORDS BY JOE RUSSIn the modern era of globallydistributed media, our creative outputcan be viewed by a hugely diverse audiencethat reaches across each nationality, raceand religion. As a result, creatives riskmiscommunicating and, at worse,offending a portion of the their audiencewith poorly targeted design.The recent Jyllands-Posten cartoonincident is a clear example of culturalinsensitivity. Muslims felt that the cartoonsdepicting the Islamic prophet Muhammadwent beyond justifiable satire and weredesigned to cause offence. Clearly mockinga religious icon is bound to promote areaction, but because the Islamic faithprohibits any depiction of Muhammad, theimages proved doubly offensive. In fact,strict interpretations of Islam prohibit theillustration of any living thing.“I decided to stop putting any picture ofhumans or animals in my design works asthey contain souls. Instead I decided towork with colour spaces, abstract lines,24geometric shapes and plants as much asI can,” says Ahmad Adel Eldardiry ofEgyptian design firm newhive, whosebusiness is built upon Islamic teachings.The Jyllands-Posten cartoonist’s satiricalwork carried a clear political message, butis it possible for creative design to createsimilar controversy?Culture clashThere are many examples of no-go areasunique to certain cultures. Middle Easterncountries have more conservative attitudestowards nudity than the West. Artworkcontaining even the smallest amount ofexposed female flesh is regularly censoredin Saudi Arabia and the United ArabEmirates – evenComputer Artshas fallenfoul of the censors with one of its moresuggestive front covers.Germany and Japan, for example, areboth particularly sensitive regardingreferences to their World War II history,while monarchies such as Thailand areFORUMScomputerarts.co.ukto share your views onthis topic and morewith otherCAreaderssensitive regarding their figureheads, butsocial mores are just a small part of theissue. Understanding particular culturalsensitivities will help you avoid the pitfalls,but there are other ways to communicatemore effectively with your audience.When working with specific nationalitiesand ethnicities it pays to do yourhomework, says Ronnie Lipton, author ofDesigning Across Cultures.“Try to avoiddesign clichés and curb knee-jerk reactions,such as: ‘Oh, a Chinese audience. Let’s usea dragon and red and gold colours’. Andalthough you might be satisfied with aphotograph of a person who’s Asian, theaudience can often easily identify theperson’s specific native country.”Design draws on a set of signs andsignifiers, which vary dependent onculture. Colours, for example, can havevery different meanings in differentcultures. In the West, black is the colourmost commonly associated with death,while in Asia it is white. Green and yellow|April 2006ART121.news_feat 2428/2/06 1:01:39 pmNEWS ANALYSIS|also have particular associations in Islamand among Buddhist demographics.While European Roman languages areread from left to right, both Hebrew andArabic are written from right to left, andmany Asian languages are written top tobottom. The obstacles these differencescould potentially present are clear.The Arabic language in particularpresents problems on the web. “Arabic is aright to left language like Hebrew, but it’smuch more complicated because it hasseparate languages, but there are numerousanecdotal instances of bad translations.When Coca-Cola first shipped to China,the company named the product with aword that when pronounced sounded likeCoca-Cola. The problem? The charactersused actually meant Bite The Wax Tadpole.Connect with your audienceLipton says the best way to get aroundproblems of this kind is to use a nativespeaker and professional translator of thedestination language to translate, and use anative to ‘transliterate’. “This way you gobeyond the language to ensure thatappropriate tone, colours, symbols and typeare used for your target audience.”If you’re still nervous about creatingdesigns for a global market, Lipton hassome final advice. “Your job as a designeris to create designs that connect with youraudience, whether global or domestic,” shesays. “Designs that connect won’t offend.Getting there with an unfamiliar globalaudience is scarier than with a familiardomestic one, but the process and the needare just the same.”INFOwww.global-reach.comwww.newhive.comDesigning Across Culturesis publishedby How Design BooksVOX POPREADERS SHARE EXPERIENCESOF WORKING ACROSS CULTURES•“Over here in Ireland, all the taboo areasare becoming fair game. From a designperspective, I suppose the floodgateshave been opened content-wise. Mosteducated people find it quite easy to laughat themselves and understand satire. It’sfrightening to see such violent responsesto imagery.”odog•“Here in the UAE you need to worry aboutphotographs more than colours. No nudityis allowed whatsoever and all importedmags get censored with a big fat pen.”web-kitten•“A client of mine sent some stuff to Chinafor print, and her logo used a script font.They didn’t have it on their system andsupplied her a proof of something theyconsidered to be a close match. It wasnothing like it, so I had to knock together aquick tag and send it over. On reflection, Iwonder if there are different styles of theirwritten language and how easy it is toidentify the differences.”thatblokemikeRead more about this topic, and more, ontheComputer Artscomputerarts.co.uk“Getting there with an unfamiliarglobal audience is scarier than witha familiar one, but the process andthe need are the same”RONNIE LIPTONconnected characters,” says Adel Eldardiry,who developedFlaraby– an applicationthat enables designers to combine Arabictext with English in bothFlashand HTML.But even when a design features nowritten elements, the way your intendedaudience scans a page or screen will affectthe arrangement and design of icons andelements marketed to those countries.Clearly creating a design that worksuniversally is going to be difficult, whichis why websites are often localised forApril 2006|25ART121.news_feat 2528/2/06 1:01:44 pmILLUSTRATION: UNIT www.weareunit.com [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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