Good People, Great Nation

Christian Rau, Lukas Weber

»Good People, Great Nation« exami­nes, from the point of view of two gra­dua­ting com­mu­ni­ca­tion desi­gners, the back­grounds of and moti­va­tion for nation bran­ding in the form of a visual jour­na­listic analysis.

 

Dri­ven by a huge inte­rest in design pro­ces­ses wit­hin the socio-political con­text and the ques­tion of the effi­cacy of bran­dings and visual iden­ti­ties, this study rese­ar­ches cur­rent images of sta­tes and nations.

 

To this end, dif­fe­rent areas and points of con­tact with design in the con­text of nation bran­ding, which depict an ambi­guous image oscil­la­ting bet­ween iden­tity and bran­ding, are com­men­ted on: Which his­to­ri­cally roo­ted ste­reo­ty­pi­cal images describe a natio­nal iden­tity? How do they cor­re­spond to their respec­tive nation brands? In an incre­a­sin­gly media­ti­zed and inter­con­nec­ted society, what types of iden­ti­ties and images are crea­ted beyond the sup­po­sedly con­trollable and con­sis­tent images?

 

In the form of two dif­fe­rent rese­arch collec­tions, text­ual and visual exam­ples of selec­ted rese­arch areas bet­ween the oppo­sing poles of chi­ché and pro­pa­ganda are presented.

 

The­re­fore, this paper does not claim to offer a com­plete or sci­en­ti­fic over­view of the topic. Rather, it is con­side­red an impulse for the visual con­fron­ta­tion with poli­ti­cal forms of rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the view­point of the disci­pline of design research.

 

The goal of this paper is to initiate an open dis­course with rep­re­sen­ta­ti­ves from poli­tics, eco­nomy, com­mu­ni­ca­tion stu­dies and gra­phic design taking a stand on the topic from dif­fe­rent per­spec­tives. The dis­course initia­ted is sup­po­sed to be a basis of dis­cus­sion for the topic of nation bran­ding aiming to create points of con­tact bet­ween the various disciplines.

 

The core idea of the study is to reflect on the col­la­bo­ra­tion of indi­vi­dual par­ti­ci­pants in the pro­cess. We are par­ti­cu­larly inte­res­ted in the sta­tus the com­mu­ni­ca­tion desi­gner holds wit­hin basic poli­ti­cal and socie­tal struc­tures as well as his posi­tion bet­ween responsi­bi­lity and profitability.

 

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