Date of Award
Spring 5-30-2016
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Graphic Design
First Advisor
Thomas Ockerse
Second Advisor
Douglass Scott
Third Advisor
Nancy Skolos
Abstract
To maneuver is to design. As a multilingual graphic designer, I maneuver across different languages and their respective scripts. My work invites my audience to take a leap with me into unknown languagescapes.
Through sampling, analyzing similarities and differences, switching applications and contexts, challenging functions, inserting and overlaying recognizable visual systems as well as combining disparate language scripts, I become a guide for my audience, assisting them, regardless of mother tongue, to attain a degree of understanding when faced with an unfamiliar language.
My thesis asserts the critical role graphic designers play in demystifying and cracking language barriers. Every graphic designer is equipped with his or her own set of language skills. Combined with the understanding of a culture and environment, graphic designers traverse languagescapes to promote a closer affinity between their audience and a particular language.
Recommended Citation
Pang, Desmond, "Traversing languagescapes" (2016). Masters Theses. 31.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/31
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.