Decolonizing Design

When I first heard the term “decolonization”, I thought of my country, Taiwan, which was once colonized by Western countries and the Japanese. I thought of the history I was taught, the one where Taiwan reclaimed sovereignty from Japan. We called this moment decolonization. I can see now that, as a moment in history, this is not exactly true. I see now that decolonization is more than just a moment, it is a process of uninstalling all Western and Japanese ideology in our society. If decolonization is defined as changing the way we think, what does it mean to design and designer? Within this essay, I will explain how have colonial histories affected my design and how I have managed to adjust my mindset and practice.

The Taste — Childhood Memory

Growing up reading Japanese comic books with sweet teenage love stories and watching Nepon cartoon with adventure tales, I was a fan of most things Japanese by the time I reached middle school. My admiration for Japan continued into my adulthood. Now I read Japanese magazines instead of Manga. I have been to Japan five times, once mainly to view the colors of maple leaves. Though currently studying in London, I have learned how to cook Japanese food from a Japanese Youtuber and have Japanese cuisine at least twice a week.

I have rarely thought of linking Japan to colonialism. I remember my history teacher from elementary school once credited the Japanese for building roads and railways and importing modernized agricultural know-how. He also praised them as they improved the Taiwanese sanitary system by fighting malaria and cholera as well as curbing opium addiction (2013). These serious economic and social developments have helped shaped Taiwan into a modernized country. At that point in time, my understanding of this history was that we should honor the contribution that the Japanese made to Taiwan during the colonial period. As a child, I didn’t question this information because I assumed that this was a fact. As a student, I assumed the teacher knew the subject and I did not. However, when I look at history now, I realize that there is more than just one historical interpretation. The influence of Japanese culture is more complex than I understood.

The Taste — History of Taiwan

Looking at history, the Taiwanese people have experienced multiple layers of colonial and neo-colonial culture. During the age of discovery, the island was partly ruled by the European settlers, most prominently the Dutch. In the late nineteenth century, Qing China ceded Taiwan with other territories to Japan for the fifty years following the First Sino-Japanese War. After World War II, the Kuomintang accompanied with the first-generation from mainland China took over Taiwan. This action was seen as another fifty years of internal colonization for the ‘local’ Taiwanese, Minnan and Hokka (Liao, Ping-Hui, 1999). At the same time, a new colonial power dominated by the United States was established during and after the Korean War (Liu, Joyce C.H. and Sakai, Naoki, 2018).

Though these are historical events documented the past, the influence of the colonial cultures, especially Japanese and Euro-American, could still be seen in a form of capitalism every where in Taiwan until now. For example, the Japanese cartoon cat, Hello Kitty, appears at department stores, restaurants, a commercial airline and even a hospital in Taiwan. It is also easy to find teenagers dressed up like comic books characters walking down the street in Taipei city, not to mentioned about the young generation, holding coke and popcorn, queuing up for Hollywood blockbusters on weekends.

It might be implied that tying Taiwan to Japan rather than China at the cultural level, indicates a distinct identity that is different from the Chinese mainland (Jennings, Ralph, 2017). Others also suggested that at the political level, binding Taiwan as a democratic regional power with United States is simply a U.S. policy to balance the emergence of communism in China (The British Broadcasting Corporation, 2019). Despite of these controversial issue, it is evident that both Japanese and Euro-American culture play an influential part in the history of Taiwan. Also, it seems to me that the form of capitalism is another way of embedding the Western and Japanese ideology into Taiwanese society.

The Realization

As Anoushka Khandwala (2019) suggests, our taste is informed by the things we were exposed to when we were young. When I think back to what I was taught at school, and after reading several text about decolonization, I have realized my understanding of design taste is dominated mainly by Japanese culture. A culture has adopted Euro-American natural ideas and practices. In other words, both Japanese and Euro-American have greatly affected Taiwanese culture (2007). As a Taiwanese designer, my reliance on these two cultures has set the basic for what is deemed “good” or bad”. It inhibits my ability to incorporate other standards.

Take one of the modern design movements for example. Many of us were taught through education that International Typographic style was the most important graphic design style in the twentieth century. When first introduced to the style, I was impressed. As Gary Hustwit states in the documentary ‘Helvetica’, I felt as though “ …I had crawled through a desert with my mouth caked with filthy dust, and then someone offers me a clear, refreshing distilled icy glass of water” (Helvetica, 2007). Since then, I have applied almost all the features of Swiss style in my design, from the grid system to sans-serif typeface. For instance, I set the text flush-left and ragged-right in both of my English and Chinese typographic designs, while in traditional Chinese texts the text should be arranged in vertical column that are read from right to left. It is clear that I have embraced the aesthetic standards of the Swiss style features and abandoned the norms from my culture.

The Adjustment

Simba Nscuba (2019), a graphic design student at Central Saint Martins once said “Realizing that the standards we’ve been taught are not universal is key to decoloniality”. Even though it is hard to truly decolonize Western society and eliminated the influence of Japanese culture at present, Ahmed Ansari (2018), one member from the Decolonizing Design research group, suggests that we could start to “think beyond the current system we exist in today”.

To reimage something beyond the current system, Ahmed Ansari (2018) recommends that we begin with de-centering the perspectives of the settlers and restore our traditions. Chinese calligraphy, a traditional art of writing that every Taiwanese student is taught for a year at primary school, was discarded after I entered middle school. I’ve once considered the features of this writing complex and uncommunicative. I even saw the writing as a lower quality of design rather than a pure aesthetic creativity. Yet the more I dig into the history, the more I understand that in this traditional writing, each character has specific meanings. Each of them reveals itself as a moral exemplar. Unlike a type that was designed under the rule of rational grid system, the complexity appearance created by the flexible use of brush and ink allows each form to express the forces of nature and the energies from the writer. This discovery made me jump out of my modernist perception, where Wang (2018) once pointed out that modern typography is considered neutral and universally applicable. I have also realized that without the grid system, each character can still create a sense of balance and proportion and present an uninterrupted flow and rhythm in terms of layout.

According to Wu (2020), another way to conceive a different structure is to train ourselves to unlearn the God complex. At school, our outcomes were graded by marks. The grading system shapes us to believe that ‘one design is better than others’. The ego that was built throughout the education period gave us not only a sense of confidence but also a sense of arrogance. However, design is an inherently collaborative field, having a huge ego can make us forget that it is the people that make design. How we value aesthetics should not be held in designer’s hand alone, but instead in collaboration with the audience.

During my last term in university, I have started to explore human-centered approaches to design. I have applied these in self-initiated projects as a way to unlearn the idea of the so called ‘God complex’. A key principle of human-centered design is the designers “empathy with the end user” (IDEO ORG, 2020). In other words, it is a process of putting yourself in the audience’s shoes. This idea share the same meaning as the saying from Confucius (1988, pp. 5): “Do unto others as you would have done to you.” To begin with, I started my research with a questionnaire to recognize the audience’ problems and the needs. Instead of making a beautiful outcome based on my perspective, I put my ego to the side and have consulted with the target audience throughout the process. The procedure allows me to have profound connection with the people and see their feelings as if they were my own.

The concept of decolonization is often defined with contrasting views, as colonialism has manifested in various places in numerous ways. For instance, Khandwala (2020) notes that some people think it is a process of eliminating the false distinction between craft and design. In order to recognize all culturally important forms of creation, others use the term to critique eurocentrism and modernism’. For me, it is a process of recovery and the restoration of my culture and de-centering the my role as a designer among numerous design process. As a Taiwanese designer, I often ask myself what Taiwanese design is. All things considered, I have learned many things. I have studied the design history and design education in Taiwan. I have developed my understanding of the history early migrants from the south mainland. I have uncovered some of the culture of aborigines and the Japanese ruling period. And most significantly, I have recognized that Taiwanese culture has been colonized by many different groups of people at different period in time. These realizations have triggered me to adjust my mindset and practice. I need to both pick up my own traditions and develop a sense of “empathy” in regards to the needs of the audience that I am designing for.

All in all, decolonization is a process. There is no final end as capitalism is a mean of colonization. To embrace the idea does not mean changing the status quo, but challenge our own convictions (Decolonizing Design, 2017). As Khandwal (2019), pointed out, learning about the history of colonialism can open our eyes to how power structures have formed society today, and how they dominate our understanding of design. We must be continually curious, and educate ourselves about what we haven’t experienced directly to address the different of needs and desires.

Reference

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