Graphic design in a globalised world

The British Cambridge dictionary contains two parallel definitions of globalisation: (1)

Firstly:

“The increase of trade around the world, especially by large companies producing and trading goods in many different countries.”

And secondly:

“When available goods and services, or social and cultural influences, gradually become similar in all parts of the world.”

As globalisation infiltrates the spheres of economics, politics and industry, graphic design will stay abreast as the necessary companion of any company who has national or international customers. Which is to say, all companies. These two sides of globalisation each present their own questions (which are sometimes interpreted as threats) to the graphic design industry.

“The increase of trade around the world, especially by large companies producing and trading goods in many different countries.”

1. Does globalisation mean Australian designers are going to lose our jobs to cheaper, outsourced, overseas competitors?

As many other local craftsmen and women are losing their jobs as labour is being outsourced to more affordable offshore companies, the Australian graphic design industry may feel similarly threatened. However, local companies have an extremely valuable resource to offer: local knowledge. The trend to globalisation has created a burgeoning ‘localisation’ industry, where companies employ translators, marketers and graphic designers to visually and culturally translate their websites, brands and advertising for another national audience. Local designers know the intricacies of their markets, and the cultural and visual codes inherent in it that may not be immediately obvious to someone who grew up in another culture.

Take for example colour. Different colours hold different, unspoken meanings. Think about how inappropriate in Australia a red website would be for a professional pharmaceutical company, or a black wedding invitation, or brown packaging for a beauty product. This is because here we often associate blue and chrome with professionalism, black with mourning, and white with purity and cleanliness. But in China, for example, red is the colour of luck and prosperity, so often appears in business and professional items. Black is for weddings, and white is for funerals. David McCandless in his book Information is Beautiful made this diagram which elucidates the very arbitrary nature of colour symbolism by showing what colours mean to various nationalities:

For an example, see the two home pages of Internetrix, a web development and consultation company based in Wollongong. They have a site for Australia and one for China. The Australian site is mostly blue and white, horizontal, and serious. Whereas the Chinese one contains prominent use of red, ‘cute’ icons which appear light-hearted to a western viewer, and an altered navigation, to allow for the larger Chinese characters. To work in a McLuhan’s globalised ‘world village’, graphic designers need to be well-versed in the visual languages of other cultures, and experts in their own,

The second part of the definition states:

“When available goods and services, or social and cultural influences, gradually become similar in all parts of the world.”

2. Is a global culture destroying individual cultures and aesthetics?

In a post on the Snaptech Marketing blog, a graphic designer lamented the loss of national visual identities to standardised, globalised ‘professionalism’. She wrote that in the 1980s,

“The BBC was very different from CNN. Polish, Hungarian and Russian TV stations were as original as their folklore or food. Some of them looked better, some worse, but then again, that was the whole point.

As time went by, the satellite dishes were substituted with cable and wireless devices. The Internet brought a whole world onto our computer screens and, voila, in less than ten years, the whole world looks exactly the same.” (2).

There are two sides to this coin – on the one hand, the faster and broader exchange of ideas facilitated by globalisation and particularly by the internet can appear to see local and national cultures losing their individual identities and aesthetics (3). However, this extensive sharing of knowledge and ideas improves each individual’s and each culture’s ability to express themselves, using technology or simply through having a wider frame of reference and a wider base of professional contacts from different cultures.

As Iranian graphic designer and artist Ali Vazirian said in an interview with Melbourne newspaper The Age, (sic)

“The artist’s job is awareness to his native culture and protection of it. We must not ignore the fact that the global movement in the meantime is irresistible and indivisible. Globalization is attainable by uniformity of the ways of behavior. But it needs the plurality which reflects in variety of ways: national identity, ethnic identity, religious identity. A culture with spirit of invention seems fearless of the concept of globalization.” (4)

References:

1. Cambridge Dictionary Online British Edition 2011, online edn, Cambridge University Press, UK. http://dictionary.cambridge.org

2. Snaptech Marketing 2008, ‘Globalization and Its Impact on Website Graphic Design’, Weblog post, 21 July, accessed 4 September 2011, http://www.snaptech.com/snapblog/readblog.asp?blogid=176

3. Mootee, I (ed) 2011, ‘Movement’, M/I/S/C, Summer 2011, p11.

4. Rule, D 2010, ‘Globalisation and visual language: an interview with Ali Vazirian’, The Age, Melbourne,

http://www.todayposters.com/povc/goftogoo-dn-vz.html

Nizer, L 2010 ‘Web Localisation is Important… but Why and How?’, Weblog post, Abduzeedo, July 27, accessed 4 September 2011, http://abduzeedo.com/web-localisation-important-why-and-how.