Culture

The concept of culture is hard to define in such few words, for as much as it may be a tangible concept for anyone, there will never be two definitions that will be ever be the same. When given the task to define “Culture”, most will list descriptions fitting their own upbringing and status; however, as these are only parts of a bigger structure, culture, it can be argued, includes just about anything that defines us as humans.

“Culture is roughly anything we do and the monkeys don´t”
                                              Lord Raglan

I believe this demonstrates how culture can be seen as the result of a higher form of communal sentient thinking. While there are many different species that possess intricate societal structures on which their survival depends, none of them possess their own conscious culture.
For example, a group of gorillas will have an alpha male, the Silverback, leading as the dominant figure at the center of the troops attention. He will make all the decisions, mediating conflicts and determining the movements of the group. In short, he is responsible for the safety and well-being of the group.
He will be able to do all this on the basis of acquired knowledge; his instincts will have led him to situations he was able to learn from in the past, such as good feeding grounds, what regions to avoid due to territorial disputes, etc.
However, as far as we know, gorillas have no concept communal history, meaning they will not remember events as a group or develop an extended sense of taste that would translate to the concept of style as we humans have. As all erupting aggravations revolving around territorial behavior, such as food, mating rights, etc. are of primal nature, conflicts due to fundamentally different ideological outlooks on life do not appear between different groups of gorillas.

In a sense, culture has become as natural to human structure as breathing or life itself.
It just exists.

Culture is what is taught to us starting at birth, and consists only of external input until we mature enough to engage in personal inner dialogue. It consists of parts of a complete set of moral and ethical tools that teach rules, rituals, etiquette and attitudes. These form a consensus of generally accepted attributes - a code of conduct.
It cannot ever be fully unlearnt, yet it will be overwritten to an extent if the surrounding external input changes radically. In this case, however, any new external input will be subject to intense comparison against what has been learnt in its stead, keeping only the strong suits all the while discarding and belittling the weaker aspects.

It cannot be seen solely as a societal structure because it is the base of ideology, meaning that the consensus of knowledge that has been passed down for generations - be it of recorded or unrecorded nature - forms the general way we look at things within our group or society.
As an example, the ancient Greeks, from which the western world today claims intellectual heritage, had a great sense of personal agency, which means they saw themselves as being in control of their own lives and free to act as they chose. This belief, accompanied by a strong sense of individual identity, was the key foundation to the tradition of debate.

“A man was defined by his ability to debate equally as by his prowess as a warrior.”                                                                                                                    Nietzsche

The differences in personalities made effective rule-making possible, as even a commoner could challenge the king in debate and could sway any decision, as long as his logic on the subject was sound and superior to that of the king.
This, in turn, is the core of ideological democracy and philosophy - ideologies that the western world still sees as key ingredients of freedom which form the fundamental base of western culture.

Culture is a set of communal aspects that define us as humans, yet a single human can also be cultured if he shows enough of the qualities that are predetermined by society.
As designers, we try to interpret culture. We tend to start out at a point of what we know, as what is only tangible for us can really be the basis of any inception. We need culture as grounds for inspiration, and, at the same time, we create for culture as well. It is omnipresent in the process of development, as we can only assess the quality of the design via familiar reactions that we receive while talking about or sharing it.
An object can only be fully appreciated when it causes a stir in someone; it does not matter if the reaction is positive or negative - as long as there is a reaction.

As much as we need culture to feed off of, we also need it to interpret design. The visual quality, colors, and symbolism, all the aspects that make or break a project, are dependent on their cultural placement and understanding.
Culture provides us with the basic tools for interpretation with which we can form an understanding of what is around us. This is the preset under which humans connect metaphysical importance like opinion, feelings and memories to an object.
There are trained elephants, for example, that paint paintings with brushes on canvas. However, instead of expressing any personal agenda in these paintings, they seem only to interpret more or less what is around them and then put it on canvas. They do not seem step back and evaluate their own work, as they do not connect it to any value. Only humans are able to give the painting a value, because, for us, it is special in the sense that an elephant painted a painting.
We understand the process, but still add layers of culturally subjective interpretations of the intentions to the paintings without knowing if there were any intentions in the first place besides wanting a treat from the zoo keepers as a reward.

Interpreting art or design from one culture to another has similar effects. If we, for an example, examine an object from an Asian designer, it is western understanding contra eastern intention. We might be able to find the aesthetics pleasing and be able to interpret one or the other symbol correctly (if it is cliché enough), but all we are really doing is transferring our values on to the object and evaluating what applies. We look for ways to interpret what we experience visually with a set of values that are not fit for an interpretation, which more often leads to misunderstandings. The core intention behind the object might get distorted or even lost in translation.
Culture affects our interpretation, including our opinions on colors, symbols, shapes and functions, giving those elements a predetermined value. It is used as an indication index to determine if an object is interesting or not, aesthetically pleasing, etc and it is a preset for reaction.
As designers are dependent on this reaction for our process, it is important to analyze the target group over and over again during the development, as the reactions will differ from group to group and culture to culture. We learn to do this in design school, but the analysis usually sticks to stereotypes when it comes to foreign ways of life.
This fact influences our thought process heavily, as culture defines constants for everyday life that we try to cater to. For instance, take western culture. Western thought dictates that the best way to enjoy a dinner is seated at the table, preferably not alone but with family, in a surrounding where certain etiquette and manners apply.

The physical components of this depicted scene are: 

                    - Chairs with a predetermined height
                - a table with a predetermined size
                                           - Food that has been cooked and is served in dishes

The same scene for an instance in Japan entails a different set of components of which the physical parameters are changed. The table is considerably lower, there might or might not be seating objects that surround it and it is culturally fully acceptable to serve and eat ramen noodles in their plastic packaging in a family setting.

This demonstrates nicely what kind of gravity the context that culture provides has to design. When set in a context, an object can be understood easily. Take the context away and you are most likely to lose the concise intention of the designer.

For instance, Nendo, a group of Japanese designers with a very clean visual language, have a set of dispensers for salt, pepper and soy sauce (“Talking”) with a special opening to indicate what is inside. Note that “Talking” relies very heavily on a knowledge of the Japanese language. The openings are shaped according to the form the mouth makes when pronouncing the words for salt (“Shi-O”), pepper (“Ko-Sho”) and soy sauce (“Sho-Yu”).

For someone close to the culture this little inside joke will be understood, which gives the object cultural relevance. As outsiders looking in, we will always need someone, such as a cultural insider, to point out the otherwise obvious in order to understand the intention.


As objects are products of culture, people use them to define their role in a cultural setting.

The logical conclusion is that a good design should either:
- interpret a part of culture in a way that a foreign culture can see and evaluate the object almost in the same way as the one on which the design is based, changing the visual language of the object in a way that it would be more accessible to others and thus broadening the target group.
- have the designer make a conscious decision to create a visual statement that takes some time to read, but which in the end rewards the recipient with an “OH!” moment of understanding.