"Visual Communication Conference 11, Jackson Hole WY, June 1997.

In a cross-cultural communication situation the choice of symbols is particularly complex because the symbols must be culturally acceptable to the audience as well as the designer. In other words, designers are sometimes inclined to make decisions based solely or primarily on their aesthetic judgment. They may find themselves proposing design solutions that reflect their own culture and exhibit little sensitivity to the nuances of symbols and colors used in other cultures.

In instrumental communication, such as advertising, designers must also be aware of the appeal of their visual messages to the targeted audience and also consider the functional requirements of the message objectives. In cross-cultural communication, however, the aesthetic and functional decisions are further impacted by the cultural filters of both the communicator and the audience.

The Problem

Imagine you are a designer who has been asked by a local McDonald's owner to develop a poster and other visuals for a Hispanic Heritage program for that store. The store wants to emphasize its sensitivity to the local Hispanic culture of both customers and employees who come from the surrounding neighborhood.

An all too common response would be for the designer to develop a design and then present it to the manager. That approach precipitated this project: the designer developed a poster proposal featuring Picasso's Don Quixote and the manager questioned whether this was an appropriate symbol for the local Hispanic community, most of whom traced their roots to Mexico rather than Spain.

The problem the designer faced was determining what symbols and colors could be used to communicate visually in a way that depicted the Hispanic community with sensitivity, at the same time communicated in an interesting way to non-Hispanic people about the culture.

Cross-cultural communication can be either one-way or two-way. In one-way communication, such as advertising, one culture, usually a dominant or majority one, communicates to another which is a subculture. In the McDonald's case a company run largely by white middle-class Anglos was attempting to develop a message for Hispanics with which it does business.

In two-way cross-cultural communication, the symbols that are appropriate to use in communication with the subculture have to also communicate effectively about the subculture to the majority culture. In other words, the colors and symbols are appropriate and deliver meaning for both the subculture and the majority culture. In the McDonald's example, that means that the design package must also be appealing and communicate just as effectively to the Anglo employees and customers who will also see the poster.

It should also be noted that cross-cultural communication projects are sometimes location specific. A specific Korean-American community, for example, may share a general set of culturally nuanced symbols with other Korean-American communities, but it may also be different in its view of the appropriateness of specific symbols because of its history and traditions. That is particularly true for the tremendous variety of distinctive cultures loosely identified in the U.S. as Hispanic which includes such source cultures as Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, and Spanish, among others. The confusion also lies in the terms we use for these groups such as Hispanic, Chicano, Latino, and Mexican American, terms which also carry nuanced meanings.

The Concept of a Cultural Palette

In order to better assess the cultural acceptability of design symbols, the concept of a cultural palette has been developed to assist the designer in the development of culturally sensitive symbols. A palette is the board on which an artist mixes colors, but the word is also used to refer to the range of colors used in a particular painting.

The idea of a cultural palette was developed by the author and a graduate student who used it as the focus for her master's thesis. (Sandra E. Moriarty and Lisa Rohe, "Cultural Palettes: An Exercise in Sensitivity for Designers," Journalism Educator, Winter, 1992, p. 32-37.) It is a method to develop a set of culturally sensitive set of symbols and colors as well as other graphic elements such as layouts and artistic styles which may reflect cultural nuances. The symbols are determined to be culturally sensitive as a result of a structured assessment process, which is the focus of this paper.

The Assessment Process

In general, the procedure involves first compiling an image bank of symbols and colors. These materials can be accumulated from books, magazines, brochures, advertising, packaging--or any other source of graphics that are targeted to that group--as well as from interviews with cultural representatives. Then a panel of experts is identified who will review the image bank and identify the ones that are good (appropriate and inoffensive) and poor (inappropriate and offensive) symbols and colors. The final step is to create the palette of colors and symbols that provides a range of culturally sensitive graphics at the same time identifying the insensitive or inappropriate colors and symbols that need to be avoided.

The following steps summarize the process of doing a visual cross-cultural analysis involving a complex two-way communication situation:

1. Majority Culture Images: Investigate the images of the subculture as seen and used by the source or dominant culture and the images currently used to communicate about the subculture to and within the dominant culture.

2. Subculture Images: Investigate the images used by the subculture itself in its self presentation. These can come from field research and interviews with local experts.

3. Image Bank: Develop an image bank combining all these symbols.

4. Expert Panel Evaluation: Establish a panel of experts for that culture and ask the experts to rate the images in terms of their appropriateness, representiveness, and potential for offensiveness.

5. Cultural Palette: Eliminate the symbols from both lists that are deemed inappropriate by the experts.

6. Cross Cultural Palette: Compare the two lists. Identify a palette of the most appropriate colors and bias-free symbols that appear on both lists and thus communicate to both the dominant culture and the subculture.

Applying the Procedure

For the McDonald's Hispanic Heritage project, the designer first defined the subculture involved in the corporation's programs as being primarily of Mexican-American background living in Denver.* (Note: This investigation was aimed at Hispanics living in this particular area, and thus the conclusions may not be valid for other regions of the U.S.).

Dominant Culture Images. To determine the images of the subculture as seen by the majority culture, the researcher collected travel brochures about Mexico and analyzed the visuals and colors used in these publications. This simply gives an indication of what symbols and colors are seen as communicating effectively about Mexican culture to American tourists, primarily affluent white Anglos. Other sources included Mexican themed products and services marketed to the majority culture.

The first list of symbols from the majority culture included the tourist imagery of beaches, palm trees, sand, sun, parrots, tropical fish, tropical drinks by a pool, Mayan ruins, Mariachi bands, guitars, pinatas, sombreros, dancers in traditional dress, an open market (mercado), and colorful hand-woven blankets. The most popular color was blue, ranging from turquoise to deep blue, which seemed to be used for water and sky imagery. One brochure used fluorescent day-glo pink as an accent with the blue.

The American brands in the Mexican food section used a color palette dominated by red, green, yellow, and brown. Other colors that occurred with some frequency included pink, turquoise, and orange. Symbols included chili peppers in both red and green, a pinata, a man wearing a sombrero sleeping under a cactus, a bull, a duck, a woman in a sombrero and Mexican costume, a mesa with a cactus, an Aztec sun, and a pueblo or adobe house. The Taco Bell restaurant chain also uses adobe-style architectural motifs and turquoise, purple, and pink colors.

Subculture Images. For the local part of the study, the research analyzed the packaging and merchandising of American products and products with Spanish language labels in grocery stores in the Hispanic neighborhood. Other sources included Spanish language publications available within the community, interviews with local Hispanic media representatives, Hispanic art in museums or books, and discussions of the subculture's graphic code in other articles and books.

The Spanish labeled products used the same color palette as the American foods-red, green, yellow, and brown. Most of the designs were bands of color with type. Typically the packages used very little artwork and few symbols. One package used a green bowl with flames coming out of it.

Interviews were conducted with Hispanic community representatives, media executives, and university specialists. More specifically, the eight experts consulted for this study included a specialist in Latino culture at the Museum of Natural History, an advertising executive who owns an agency that specializes in Hispanic advertising, the editor of a Spanish language newspaper, the owner of a Spanish language radio station, the research director and a policy analyst for the Latin American Research and Service Agency, the research director at the BuenoCenter for Multicultural Studies on campus, and the director of Chicano Studies.

From these interviews, a list of possible colors was developed that included the Mexican flag colors (green, white, red), yellow, brown, orange, black, traditional costume colors (brights), primary colors (red, yellow, blue), purple, turquoise, burgundy, gray, and sand. The symbols they recommended included chili and jalapeno peppers, families, pyramids, the Spanish language itself, Aztec and Mayan symbols, the sun, Southwest nature images, circles, sarape (shawl) designs, swords, folkloric stamps, century cactus, and santos (religious statues).

Image Bank Creation and Evaluation. These two sets of symbols and colors were compiled and presented visually as an image bank. The experts interviewed initially were again consulted this time as an expert panel to judge the appropriateness of the symbols in the image bank. They were asked to rate the symbols and colors according to cultural appropriateness and freedom from bias. The aggregation of these ratings gave the following cultural palette:

Most appropriate colors: green, red, and white (the colors of the Mexican flag), yellow, brown, and orange.

Least appropriate colors: black, purple, turquoise, burgundy, gray, sand, mauve, and pastels. Blue, the color that dominates most appeals to Anglos, is rarely appropriate according to these experts. (Note that this list includes the Taco Bell color palette.)

Most appropriate symbols: anything that says "familia" such as home and hearth, chili peppers (symbols for traditional cooking but also the red and green relate back to the flag), and circles (hands and arms interlinked reflect back to the family or home motif). Also the historical Aztec and Mayan symbols were identified as appropriate. The Spanish language itself was identified as a positive symbol with suggestions that Spanish words can be used as graphic markers.

Least appropriate symbols: sombreros, cactus, donkeys, man sleeping against a cactus, Frito bandito and Juan Valdez (the experts did not approve of any symbol that signified peasants, bandits, or outlaws). Southwest images, such as pueblos, and Southwest colors were declared to be more representative of the American Southwest than Mexico.

Other Studies

In addition to this Hispanic study, additional studies have investigated culturally sensitive symbols for other ethnic groups. A follow up project compared the results of the original Denver Hispanics study with Tex-Mex communities in San Antonio. Additional work has been done with students of an Indian (Indian subcontinent) background, Korean students in the U.S., a Navajo community in Arizona, and a more generalized analysis of native American symbols and imagery to determine if there are any that are common and less reflective of tribal specifics.

In a more instrumental communication situation, such as advertising and public relations for an information or marketing campaign, "target audiences" have been studied which are subgroups or market niches that may have culturally nuanced visual communication patterns. These studies are situated in some product or service marketing effort in terms of how a campaign could sensitively address their needs and interests. The groups we have studied include high school cheerleaders, vegetarians, lesbians and bisexual women, mothers of infants, young single women (21-26), young children studying science.

The results of these various studies of both ethnic groups and market segments are summarized in the Appendix in terms of appropriate and inappropriate symbols and colors.

Deconstructing the Cross Cultural Communication Process

Stepping back from the details of these various studies, we can see the outline of the process used in cross-cultural visual communication. The process involves both encoding, decoding, and sometimes recoding. An important part of the process is the recognition of the critical role played by cultural lenses and cultural filters.

Encoding, or message design, begins with the development of an intended visual message and the functional frame that surrounds it. In other words, who is it addressed to and what are its objectives? The message is also modified by the encoder's cultural lens which shapes and focuses the meaning of the message in terms of the encoder's cultural codes. An important dimension of the cultural lens, particularly for visual communication, is the aesthetic frame that is fitted around the visual message. The result of these functional, cultural, and aesthetic steps in the message design process is a set of symbols acceptable to the message designer through which the message is presented.

Decoding, or perception, begins with the confrontation of the message designer's set of symbols (symbolic elements, colors, layout, artistic styles, composition, graphic decisions, as well as the verbal elements) which are processed through the receiver's aesthetic frame and cultural filter. In addition to interpreting meaning, the cultural filter also identifies inappropriate symbols in the message as presented. Assuming the cultural fit is acceptable, then the interpretive process continues on through the decoder's functional frame (what is this message all about?) to arrive at a perceived message.

To analyze the complexity of such a process, let's return to the McDonald's example. In this case, the encoding was driven by the company and its hired designer. As the designer finishes the Hispanic Heritage message design (poster, signage, other graphic materials), employees (both Anglos and Hispanics)decode the message as presented to create their own perceived messages, which may vary depending upon their own experiences but more importantly may be modified or countered by their cultural filter. Employees may also encode a response message back to the company which also will be affected by their cultural filter. In addition, employees may recode the message as they deliver it personally to customers. The customer (both Anglos and Hispanics)decodes messages about the Hispanic Festival both from the visual communication vehicles (posters, etc.) and from the interpersonal communication of the employees. The customer may also encode a response message back to the company as well as to the employee.

Note how many times in this cross-cultural communication situation the message is translated through a cultural lens or a cultural filter. At each of these points, a decision is being made about acceptability based on a fit with the individual's cultural code.

Notice also, that the corporate encoding is identified as coming through an Anglo cultural lens. The objective of the Cultural Palette is to add a Hispanic viewpoint to the encoding process at this critical point in the message design process. It is hoped that this cultural palette assessment method will make it possible to better manage these cultural intersections in order to deliver visual messages that are more sensitive to cultural nuances.

PART I: THE ETHNIC STUDIES

The Tex-Mex study

Most Appropriate Symbols: family scenes (in kitchen, at table, sitting on porch), children playing with handmade toys or family dog, cooking traditional foods (tortillas & tamales), the pinata

Least Appropriate Symbols: The Alamo, the Texas "Lone Star State" flag, sleepy Mexican leaning against cactus, authority figures (police, military), the serape, the sombrero, Mexican bandits and/or drug smugglers,

Most Appropriate Colors: red, green, white (not because of the flag but because they are the colors of the main ingredients of salsa), blue and brown, yellow and orange

Least Appropriate Colors; fluorescent colors, Southwestern pastels (sand, mauve, aqua, turquoise),

The India (subcontinent) Study:

Most Appropriate Symbols: the rangoli pattern drawn on floors and entryways, a rangoli pattern with an image of the sun god, a rangoli pattern with an image of the bull, Nandi, a textile pattern featuring a mango leaf design, the symbol of creation and the first word (OM) in Hindu mythology (too sacred to be used in commercial communication), the symbol of Ganesh and his wife Paravati, another Ganesh symbol--the elephant boy, the conch shell symbol called Shenkh, the Hindu goddess of wealth--Lakshmi, a diya or small lamp made of red clay, the swastika, the peacock, the lotus flower, the rose, a flower garland, the cow, homemade earthenware pots and large brass containers.

Least Appropriate Symbols: the half moon with stars (specific to the Muslim religion and a negative symbol for Hindus), nudity and blatant sexuality, an owl, cats.

Most Appropriate Colors: red, maroon, yellow, dark green, saffron (dark yellow or orange).

Least Appropriate Colors: white, black.

The Korean Student Study:

Most Appropriate Symbols: tiger, phoenix, dragon, magpie, lotus, bamboo, hawks, fish, flowers.

Least Appropriate Symbols: cat, cow bird, snake.

Most Appropriate Colors: white, red, blue, yellow, green, orange, magenta

Least Appropriate Colors: purple, pink, black, brown, pastels, gray.

The Navajo Study:

Most Appropriate Symbols: the loom and weaving patterns (swastika and the Greek cross), the eagle, the medicine man, water, clouds, the rainbow, corn.

Least Appropriate Symbols: anything symbolizing death, Anasazi ruins (haunted), the owl, the snake, fish, the coyote (trickster, comes from some other tribe) ,any form of graphic self representation, any representation of eye contact with strangers, alcohol and any suggestion of the drunk, lazy Indian.

Most Appropriate Colors: four sacred colors--white (light shell color to beige), red (including shades from a deep maroon to orange), blue (turquoise or indigo), black (jet to gray).

Least Appropriate Colors: gaudy colors

The Native American Study: (this is a generalized investigation of tribal differences to determine commonalties, if any)

Most Appropriate General Symbols: feathers, drum, flute, circle

Tribal Specific Appropriate Symbols: dwellings (adobe, teepee), pottery, buckskin clothing, turtle, moon, sun, eagle, moccasins, coyote, horse, papoose, buffalo, stars, art

Least Appropriate Symbols: war weapons that perpetuate the Indian stereotype as a savage warrior (tomahawk, bow and arrows), peace pipe, chief's feather headdress, anything that represents gambling or alcoholism, tribal specific symbols used inappropriately

Most Appropriate Colors: earth tones, red, blue, green, yellow, tan

Least Appropriate Colors: (too individualized by tribe to generalize)

PART II: THE MARKET SEGMENT STUDIES

The Study of Young Single Women (early 20s) for a cosmetics line:

Most Appropriate Symbols: flowers, jewels, circles and diamond shapes

Least Appropriate Symbols: a rose, exclamation points, squares and triangle shapes,

Most Appropriate Colors: earth tone shades (peach, mauve, light brown, sea foam green, pale yellow, pale turquoise, soft pink, soft blue), royal blue.

Least Appropriate Colors: bright reds, black, gold, burgundy, navy blue, bright yellow, kelly green, purple, hot pink

The Study of Mothers of Young Children:

Most Appropriate Symbols: hearts, flowers, plants, circles, cute animals; shapes that are soft, rounded, and feeling oriented. (Note, pictures of cute kids and babies are not necessarily attention grabbers.)

Least Appropriate Symbols: war, violence, sex, starvation, social discontent, anger, aggression (the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example); harsh images with sharp edges.

Most Appropriate Colors: yellow, purple, pastels (light blue, pink, mint green, lavender)

Least Appropriate Colors: black, brown, neon colors

The Study of Young Children and Science:

Most Appropriate Symbols: preferred stylized drawings over realistic photographs, animals, humorous images, gender role models (women for girls and men for boys).

Least Appropriate Symbols: scary images (blow up of a fly).

Most Appropriate Colors: preferred colorful images (green, orange, red), primary colors.

Least Appropriate Colors: muted colors (white, brown, gray, silver).

The High School Cheerleader Study:

Most Appropriate Symbols: cars (sports cars, trucks), children, young animals (puppies, kittens), couples, attractive men, athletic women, medium to long length hair, baggy, faded and ripped jeans, .

Least Appropriate Symbols: lingerie, tampons, retro-fashions (black lipstick, white-powdered faces, bell-bottom pants), cigarettes (Joe Camel is OK), big hair, "girly" fashions ( tight or spandex look, flowery, pastel colors), sexual imagery.

Most Appropriate Colors: deep jewel tones--forest and kelly greens, sapphire and navy blues, amethyst and violet, mauve and burgundy, and sable and derby browns.

Least Appropriate Colors: yellow and orange.

The Vegetarian Study:

Most Appropriate Symbols: rainbow, "mother earth," cornucopia (vegetables/grains), "v" for vegan, animals and people together, sun, scenery, tilled or planted soil, farmhouses and barns, old stoves, hearth, landscape, forest, old etchings, flowers, organic symbol (HM-Healthmark), old Native American women, cherubs.

Least Appropriate Symbols: male and female bodies (no sex appeal), animal flesh, no bimbos/blondes

Most Appropriate Colors: primary colors, blues, greens, yellow, purple, bright red, white, rainbows of bright colors.

Least Appropriate Colors: dark colors (grays, navy, brown, black), crimson red.

The Lesbian and Bisexual Women's Study:

Most Appropriate Symbols: the upside triangle (in pink), the double sided axe or "labris," lambda, rainbow flag, an old surviving tree, water and earthen imagery, mystical and mythological symbols (sorceresses and goddesses), the snake, circles, black and white photography and line drawings, active woman acting assertively, women together (gentle and caring),

Least Appropriate Symbols: passive or submissive women, solitary women, solitary assertive women, feminine imagery (make up and cosmetics), provocative heterosexual imagery, black and white androgynous people, pornographic imagery, square shapes, playful erotic imagery with leather,

Most Appropriate Colors: pink, purple, teal, green, white, blue, black.

Least Appropriate Colors: neons , orange, brown.












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