When Culture Meets Design

We talked about culture and communication design in today's class. When it came to CULTURE, this picture sudenly came into my mind. This was a photo I took last weekend in a restaurant in Langham Place for my visual lexicon. I think there are a lot of things can be discussed in this advertisenment.

In this advertisement, the orange color slogan reads:"Let's go to eat SOFT RICE!!!" And below the main slogan are the penguins crying out the names of different kinds of SOFT RICE offered in that restaurant.(including the one with beef, with crab and with shells.) SOFT RICE is the thing this restaurant wants to promote. I didn't try this rice that day. So I guess this rice must have been cooked very soft in some particular way.

The shining point is the phrase "EAT SOFT RICE". This phrase in mandarin is spoken as "chi ruan fan" . This is a very negative phrase to describe those kind of a man who live on a woman and doesn't earn a life by himself and also has a weak character acting like a coward in life. It is originally from Shnaghai dialect and now has spreaded widely over China. Rather than its apparent meaning, this phrase has also been furthered to describe those kind of man who get a promotion by doing something unethical with his woman boss, such like this.

I guess whether the designer of this ad really know the meaning of this phrase. In one hand, I guess he / she knew this meaning and want to use this joking way to attract customers, just like the toilet restaurant in Mongkok. People nowadays are crazy about "not good things" and the designer are using this point attarcting customers. On the other hand, the designer doesn't know this meaning and the reason why using this slogan is just because he/she has heard about it but didn't do the research. If this is the situation, I think then CULTURE is vital here. Becuase this slogan will create an ironic impact on thepromotion. Maybe it will annoy its customers, and the restaurant will lose business.

One more thing, the designer should also know whether HK people know the meaning of this phrase. If this slogan is not known widely by HK people, then this slogan won't work out, no matter in the positive promoting way or in the nrgative ironic way.

So knowing a certian culture is very improtant if we are going to use this culture as part of our design. And what I don't understand in this poster is that, why the designer is using penguins to promote? I don't think the penguin is the symbol of this restaurant.

Try to think more...