Pure design: Culture and design

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mario garcia

Culture and design Design is deeply rooted in the culture and traditions of the people for whom it is intended. Furniture designers, sculptors, and architects follow subtle, cultural leads in their work. Publication design is no exception. Around the world, newspapers and magazines look alike, but I am even more surprised by the differences, usually accentuated with touches that are not so obvious, but which are there, waiting to be discovered. Scandinavian newspapers tend to have the clean, uncontested look that is typical of Nordic cities. Deciphering cultural elements takes nothing more than a quick run or walk through the city, or a sharp eye when traveling by train or bus within a city. Newspapers in those Nordic cities with Viking traditions circulate in environments where one does not see curtains in any color but white. However, try a tour of a Latin American city, or Greece, Spain, and Italy, and the opposite is true. White curtains rarely appear. Instead, one sees every color of the rainbow. That is when the designer takes out the digital camera, or the note pad, and scribbles thoughts at the most basic level of how culture and design blend. Latin American newspapers show more emotion, bolder headlines, brighter colors. Greek and Italian newspapers also display the immensity and intensity of life in those countries.

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In American newspapers, regional differences are accentuated: with Southern newspapers showing a calmer, more relaxed visual environment than those in the large cities of the Northeast and Midwest. An important step in the design of a newspaper is to incorporate a bit of cultural identity.� 

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mario garcia

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pure design

Accentuating the natural: Newspapers must reflect the visual environments in which they exist. Here we see front pages that typify their regions well. Il Secolo XIX, Genoa: Italian newspapers show energy, congestion, vibrancy. Diario de Noticias, Portugal: An island of colorful flowers, a front page to match. Typos, Athens, Greece: Vigorous, bold, and expressive.

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