It all begins with “How Might We?”
How might we as designers share awareness to others about color culture?
With my capstone project, I had to deep dive into what interested me as a designer and viewer. As a designer color is a strong strategy to tell a story with any project. With color, psychology expresses the meaning of different colors to help grab the attention of your audience. However, it didn’t express the same meaning for everyone who has a different cultural background. I saw this has a culture barrier and not enough knowledge of what different color means with different cultures.
The goal and mission
The purpose of my project is to go back to what color means to different cultures and not just our own. Color culture is the symbolic meaning of color for different people with different backgrounds. It is important as a designer and a human to respect and value other's cultures, which can reduce cultural barriers and create more cultural awareness. What we might see as a harmless, beautiful color of red could mean a higher standard to an African tribe/community. Exposing ourselves to different cultures can help us view life from a different perspective. The goal is to have my audience wanting more information about the color culture and do their own research and maybe look deeper into their own culture and see how color is used.
What the people want to learn.
With my research of wanting to talk about the color culture, I had to figure out what topics people wanted to learn. I made a survey about my project to narrow down the information I will share. The survey was open for 2 weeks and sent out to people who have different cultural backgrounds, different ages, and knowledge about color and culture working together. 78 people (anonymous) responded to the survey and picked the top three important topics of culture. Below is a pie chart of the results of the culture topic and two important questions I asked.
Final Results of Culture Topics
After having the survey up for 2 weeks I added different cultural topics that seemed interesting to the audience. Not only did this help me narrow down my topic but it helps me know what do people want to learn.
First choice was Religious, second was Political and third choice was Symbolism.
What does culture mean to you?
Participant #53
“Culture is the traditions, food, clothing, stories, celebrations that a person identifies with. I believe it is one of the most important aspects of our upbringing and helps define who we are as people.”
Participant #63
“Expression, language, fashion, music, food.....an 'overstanding' of who we are, in a particular environment during a specific time period.”
Participant #45
“The community in which you were raised and their beliefs and traditions”
Participant #14
“Culture is the shared language, beliefs, experiences of a group of people. These influences are then reflected in the manner in which that group of people expresses themselves in their aesthetics, their arts, and built environment s. This is the best I can con up within this form!”
Participant #39
Ethnic arts, humanity, literature of a people”
Participant #1
Culture is the culmination of a people's experiences, ideas, and beliefs coming together to form a complex but beautiful interwoven set of traditions and comradery.”
Do you believe there's a connection between color and culture? Why or Why not?
Participant #18
“I think there are generalizations that color and culture are connected. I more connect culture to location/ region and family values rather than color. However, if someone shares a similar culture with their family, one might make the assumption that because those people are the same color, then their color is the reason they have the same culture. Idk if that made sense”
Participant #14
“Yes! Different cultures experience colors differently based on when they developed words to describe colors. Ie, the Odyssey makes reference to the "wine-dark sea" because when it was written the Greeks did not yet have a word to describe blue. The Japanese word 青 (ao) describes both green and blue because the word green was developed later. Language has an impact on our experience of color, which of course is a part of the culture. Colors also usually have symbolic meanings in different cultures. For instance, white is a neutral color in the West and is popular for wedding dresses, but in Asia, it symbolizes death and is worn for funerals”
Participant #10
“Yes if color means different things in different cultures, black means something different in each culture. Like if you’re asking is there a link between color associated with happiness(emotion) and culture yes. I think if you’re saying if there’s a color that connects to a specific culture absolutely no.”
Participant #38
“The relevance is mostly due to the flag represented by the area but like with India, the vibrant colors in their color go beyond their symbols.”
Participant #9
“I believe there is a connection, but I don’t feel the color is always tied to culture because culture has many aspects- where you are from (the place), various scenarios (school, sports, music, etc). Each person might experience many cultures in their lives that they are tied to.”
Participant #40
“Yes. Color in some cultures are seen in either a positive or negative light”