Intercultural Design: Everyday Design

 

7/2/25 - 21/3/25 / Week 1 - Week 7
Brendan Fedya / 0376283
Design Principles / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Intercultural Design: Everyday Design

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Lectures

II. Instructions

III. Tasks

IV. Reflection

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I. LECTURES

➼     Culture & Design

In this era, visuals have played a major role in our lives, incomparable to any other time in history. Researches has proven that visuals are perceived far more effectively than text, an s designers, we must understand this aspect and incorporate it to create meaningful and effective visuals as a way to communicate.

The designs or visuals we see today from all over the world are inseparable from our daily cultures because they have reasons behind their creation, for example is shown below (Figure 1.1), where the 'tree' visuals are given various meanings, starting from religious beliefs, social symbolisms, and even for product logos.

    Figure 1.1: Visuals with symbols.

➼     Design Significance & System

Through a breakdown or expansion of a design system, we could easily identify the significance of culture in a particular design. Here's an example of analysis about a health product named Nature Republic:

    Figure 1.2: Logo visual analysis example.

To conduct a throughout research, here's how the design system direction should be:

    Figure 1.3: Design system and examples.

➼     Design Sensitivity 

Cultural sensitivity in a design is not merely about the aesthetics, but it's also about the functionality and user experience. Designs created should be universal, which means it caters even to people with different needs. But, it should also adapt specific cultures based on the area to increase the acceptance of a product/service there.

Some symbols, for example the ladybug shown in (Figure 1.3) carry different meanings about luck; Western people treat the number of dots in a ladybug the numbers of bad luck, while the Japanese treat it as a number of lucky months. Because of this, designers should be cautious and conduct thorough research beforehand (cultural awareness training and user researches like ethnographic studies or user testing across diverse groups) to avoid unintentional misunderstandings. This awareness of choices could include, but not limited to, symbols, images, colors, typography, and language.

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II. INSTRUCTIONS

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III. TASKS

➼     Project 1: Proposal (Week 1-3)

       ‣     Week 1

For the first week, we are introduced to the Intercultural Design module, and the theme for this February 2025 semester is 'Everyday Design'. We were then asked to form groups of six for the task assessment throughout the module. We were assigned as Group 33.

The group members consists of:

1. Subhana Salim (Group Leader)

2. Brendan Fedya (Me)

3. Sara Patel

4. Nikolas Shah Hannah Abdullah

5. Chika Clarissa Widjaja

6. Christopher Jayson Tan

       ‣     Week 2

In this week, we were assigned Mr. Asrizal as our supervisor.

We discussed together and came up with the idea of researching westernization effect on Malaysia, particularly on restaurants. Initially, we picked menu design for the topic, but we think it's not suitable as there aren't many information to research about this.

Then, we changed the topic into research about the westernization on Malaysian restaurants in general, so we visualize how those restaurants will be. We did sketches for a mock restaurant, which consists of the waiter/ waitresses uniform, fusion foods with the menu, and the restaurant logo. I am responsible of doing the logo design of the mock restaurant, and I did it in Adobe Illustrator. 

I used the Grained Regular font, and constructed it into my desired style with the curvature tool. Below are some images during the process:

Figure 3.1: Text illustrating process.

With my team, we brainstormed ideas for the logo image. We came up with and idea which incorporate celery & lemongrass that resembles spoon & fork. Celery as a representative for Western dishes (as they usually use those on their specialties) and lemongrass for Malaysian dishes. Together it creates a logo with an appropriate meaning, symbolizes the fusion of both cultures. 

After they sent their drawings to me, I vectorized the image with the pen tool to make it look like an logo in Illustrator, then combine it with the text I created. I added the text 'Kuala Lumpur' to make it more sophisticated, similar to those fancy restaurants and hotels spread across Kuala Lumpur. Those additional abstract slices in the logo is to symbolize a knife cutting through ingredients for cooking, this is to add depth to the logo so that it won't look that plain.

Figure 3.2: Logo illustrating process.

       ‣     Week 3

After consulting with Mr. Asrizal, he said that the 3 ideas we should propose for this topic are better off with the ideas on how the videos should look like, not inventing a new style / product for the restaurant.

So we researched on that and put it on our PPT for this project, which we will present it by recording ourselves. This whole week was spent on us finalizing our research on the PPT, where we elaborated more on the topic, talked in detail about the three ideas along with the pros and cons, also stating the references that we used for the proposal .

➼     Project 2: Field Study (Week 4)

       ‣     Week 4

This is the data collection week where we collect information through our several methods. For this, we went to SS15 as it's a very popular place to find food amongst the locals and also the students. We found 3 interesting restaurants, Nasi Kandar Pelita & Canai Cafe for the authentic Malaysian restaurants, and Jibril for the Westernized restaurant. We used various ways to gather data ranging from observations, food reviews, documentation, and interviewing one another. More details are given in our PPT below along with the Google Drive link that includes all of our compiled data in the form of videos, photos, and voice notes:

Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kaCF1DbvINY0hR_OYF6m-4gYy0Dc3Ile?usp=drive_link

➼     Project 3: Final Project (Week 5-7)

       ‣     Week 5

For this week, we made an additional video about us expressing our thoughts for the overall experience so far, and it was quite funny filming this. We tried to find a private space for all of us so that our audios could be heard clearly, and this will be the last video in our TikTok page along with some hilarious bloopers.

       ‣     Week 6

We started to setup our TikTok account while doing the edits for the videos, inserting captions and giving ambient music like how TikTok videos usually are. Then we uploaded it on TikTok according to chronological order. We named our TikTok page @makan.mashup, makan means eat in Malay language, while mashup means the mix or the fusion of the dishes. Plus, those two words rhymes really well and sounds rather catchy to viewers.

Additionally, we started to work on the final PPT which includes the recap on project 1 & 2, along with the progress and final output for the final assessment. 

       ‣     Week 7

In the final week, we finished our PPT and started recording the presentation, everything went well and the recording is still below the limit of 10 minutes. All of us are also finalizing our e-portfolio blogs for our individual reflective writings.

We promoted our TikTok page on our Instagram stories so that we could gain more views, because it will be quite hard if we only relied on the TikTok algorithm alone as we're not famous creators. Below is a view comparison, before and a day after promoting, we actually gained quite a lot of views! As you can see, the bloopers video got over 100 views. From that video, we will start to get more public attention and people would start exploring more in our page for the rest of our videos about the food.

Figure 3.3: Statistics before and after promoting.

TikTok page link: https://www.tiktok.com/@makan.mashup

Here's our final PPT along with the presentation video:

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IV. REFLECTION

This is the first group assignment for our major until now, so I need to somewhat adjust myself to the methods at first, because I prefer working individually for most of the design projects before. I was grouped with some people that I didn’t know, hence I was quite worried on how our work will progress. Fortunately, my teammates were definitely the best ones I could get. Our leader gave us clear directions, asking our opinions on everything before proceeding, and I'm sure we did everything without pressure and wholeheartedly. Communication is key, everyone just understood their own tasks, and we distributed our tasks perfectly to each other based on our talents, I really couldn't ask for more from these kind of teammates. 

The experience of travelling with your teammates while doing a design assignment is quite interesting, everything we did is based on our creativity as it didn't have any fixed form of submission, unlike those by-the-book projects usually did by STEM students which I find very taxing and I think it just doesn't suit me. This is my personal preference, probably it will work the other way around from their perspective. It's just a shame that the planned study trip was canceled. I'm sure we could have gained a lot of valuable insights from it, especially since it was in Japan, which has a wide array of strong cultural heritage. I hope these study trips could happen to the future students enrolling in this module, so that they have more motivation in doing the assignment.

I also began to appreciate the various choices of fusion food available in Malaysia, it won't happen without the globalization trend from throughout the world. I am an international student, and I still think that my country hasn't adapted to Western influences as well as Malaysia. In the case of food, I believe the combination has been considered very thoroughly because the taste has really surprised me. While you might think it's a Western dish, you could also see it as a Malaysian dish. Unlike in my country, where they tend to just throw in Western ingredients and combine them with local ones without any concern, I won't even give myself a chance to taste those anymore. 

Doing this project has sparked my curiosity towards the diverse foods spread across Malaysia, and I'm truly grateful that I have these three university years to explore this country with it's rich culture. For this project, we only explored in the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor so far, I can't help but wonder how the experience would be in other states of Malaysia, especially the one famous with its renowned cuisines, like Penang and Ipoh. I will definitely embark on that journey sometime soon and bring back stories to share, inspiring more people to try these mouthwatering delicacies!