Food’s urban graphic heritage in Walthamstow

Food’s material and symbolic values are central to cultural heritage. Urban foodscapes are dense in graphic communication, with memories and meanings that connect us with place often triggered by food’s graphic heritage, for example, through fascia signs, packaging, branding, patterns, and lettering. The focus of this project is on everyday grass roots manifestations of food’s […]

Kissing the badge: Club crests or corporate logos?

Football is big business. Yet for most top clubs in Europe and particularly those in the English Premier League, match day income is not the core part of their business. To improve their earning power, clubs increasingly operate as brands. With much of the brand experience delivered in digital form, many clubs are updating traditional […]

Design outreach: Utilising graphic heritage for heritage interpretation

This six-month scoping project with United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO (UKNC) examined the concept of graphic heritage to assess how it might be a helpful tool for UNESCO designations for overcoming sustainable development challenges specific to urban environments and world heritage sites more generally. The project received funding from Research England: Higher Education Innovation […]

Sustaining São Paulo through waste collection

What role do graphic images play in the livelihood of waste collectors? Collaboration between Loughborough University and University of São Paulo explored the central role graphic images play in the work of waste collectors in São Paulo. Research examined the idea of waste as a symbolic resource. The project culminated in a photo-documentation of the […]

Memorialising Mandela in the Metropolis

What might we expect to learn about a famous person from a place named after them? Is naming an urban place simply an act of commemoration, or should such locations be further enhanced through educational resources that enhance symbolic representations? Inspired by initial discussions with the Nelson Mandela Foundation in South Africa, the Memorialising Mandela […]

Repositioning Graphic Heritage

What new perspectives can graphic design contribute to design for urban heritage? How can participatory design approaches enhance urban graphic heritage for greater social cohesion? Read further about our response to these questions. This Newton Fund project, co-ordinated by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in co-operation with the UNESCO Creative City (Shanghai) Promotion Office, […]

Photomaps

Multiple viewpoint photo composites, or photomaps, are commonplace, but critically and popularly overlooked. They bring together principles from information graphics and geographic visualisation and combine them with the image-making technologies of photography. Well known examples include the ubiquitous panorama and aerial composites such as Google Map’s Satellite View, with a history that extends back to […]

Tracing Shanghai: a graphic heritage and creative industry education collaboration

Tracing Shanghai is a collaborative educational initiative between Loughborough University School of Design and Creative Arts, and Tongji University College of Design and Innovation.  As part of the collaborative creative industries dimension of the Repositioning Graphic Heritage research project, the initiative encourages designers to be inspired and look at the city as a source of visual-aesthetic inspiration by […]

Designing the Latina Landscape

What role did design play in the creation of the Latina Province in Fascist Italy during the early twentieth century? This pilot study explores the integrated design perspectives that contributed to the creation of the Latina Province (formerly Littoria Province), Italy, in the early twentieth century. The visual character of the written discourse, visual images, […]

Colour as Place Identity: A Case Study of Leicester

How does colour contribute to constructing place identity in urban environments? – What frameworks can help to define colour identity of place? – Why are multiple perspectives important for defining the colour identity of place? – How can we use the visual ethnographic approach to enhance the understanding of colour identity?   In order to […]

The Anti-War Memorial

Through case study analysis of World War One remembrance activities, this research examines the intrinsic politics of war monuments. The military executions of World War One—in which hundreds of soldiers were court-martialled and executed for cowardice and desertion—remain controversial, without consensus or established collective narrative. This research examines historic negotiations with the subject, and notes […]

City of Westminster street nameplate, London

The creation and subsequent appropriation of the City of Westminster street nameplate design in London shows how urban graphic objects might evolve to serve a multitude of purposes. These range from the utility of labelling roads to the demarcation of a London’s theatre district and local immigrant community, commercial merchandising, heritage signifier, to cultural expression […]

Colour in Urban Places: A Case Study of Leicester City Football Club Blue

This project presents an empirical investigation on the process of place-making through colour design at a local level. The guiding research question is how does colour contribute to constructing place identity in urban environments?  The research comprises a case study inquiry of the Leicester City Football Club (LCFC) in the United Kingdom that directs the […]

Wayfinding in Beijing

Why and how are the local and global connected in urban graphic wayfinding systems? How have the meaning, function and appearance of Beijing’s graphic wayfinding systems changed since 1840? What role did Beijing’s graphic wayfinding systems play in shaping Beijing’s identities at different periods? What is the complex and manifold relationship between the local and […]