Abstract
Food’s material and symbolic values are central to cultural heritage. Urban foodscapes are dense in graphic communication, with memories and meanings that connect us with place often triggered by food’s ‘graphic heritage’, for example, through fascia signs, packaging, branding, patterns, and lettering. This paper’s focus is on everyday grass roots manifestations of food’s graphic heritage within urban settings. It introduces and argues that food’s urban graphic heritage ‘speaks’ differently to diverse individuals and communities, inviting different interpretations that play a part in the development of place attachment and social interaction. The paper also proposes methods for the recording and analysis of these relatively understudied urban features. Questions about what ‘design literacy’ might mean in a multicultural context are discussed as well as notions of power and politics inherent within design choices made in urban environments.
Keywords
graphic heritage, food, design literacy, Walthamstow
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.441
Citation
Harland, R., and Barnes, A. (2022) Food’s urban graphic heritage in Walthamstow, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.441
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Food’s urban graphic heritage in Walthamstow
Food’s material and symbolic values are central to cultural heritage. Urban foodscapes are dense in graphic communication, with memories and meanings that connect us with place often triggered by food’s ‘graphic heritage’, for example, through fascia signs, packaging, branding, patterns, and lettering. This paper’s focus is on everyday grass roots manifestations of food’s graphic heritage within urban settings. It introduces and argues that food’s urban graphic heritage ‘speaks’ differently to diverse individuals and communities, inviting different interpretations that play a part in the development of place attachment and social interaction. The paper also proposes methods for the recording and analysis of these relatively understudied urban features. Questions about what ‘design literacy’ might mean in a multicultural context are discussed as well as notions of power and politics inherent within design choices made in urban environments.