Cultures are always changing, evolving, and mixing together. Although they carry the spirit to build physical monuments, I believe the core of culture is in the non-physical traditions. Intangible Cultural Heritage includes five different categories: Oral traditions and Expressions, Performing arts, Social Practice, Knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, and Traditional craftsmanship. The visual identity system design for ICH is based on the classification above. Culture comes from a group of humans, and at the core of every human is their consciousness. Through our consciousness as humans we perceive the world through sensation and our experience defines who we are and where we belong to. Therefore, I introduce shapes that evoke that sensation into the visual system of ICH. The selected shapes are driven from the visual language that originally appears on ancient pottery. I assigned the shapes to both the categories and the senses to visually represent the concepts that currently are recorded in ICH. The dynamic visual identity of this project breaks the stereotypical image of the current out of date model. This sends a new message to the public that ICH will adopt the most advanced technology to document intangible culture from all aspects. At the same time, ICH will protect them in the best way possible. With a dynamic typeface and ever-changing logo, the visual identity system is representative of the way various cultures change, evolve, and mix together.
Instructor: Bard Bartlett
Student Project at ArtCenter College of Design
