This paper addresses the role of brand design in the validation of hegemonic narratives on the identities of cities, issued by place brands and local administrations. Drawing on concepts from Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis, we address place identity(ies), as floating signifiers, appropriated by global and local discourses in order to gain hegemony, through the naturalization of their narratives.
We examine these mechanisms at work in the visual branding of the city of Porto, as a case study. Through a critical analysis of the brand’s rhetoric and implementation, issued and controlled by the City’s Council, we identify a set of problematic equivalences that symbolically entail the obliteration of public debate. As a counterpoint to the Council’s allegedly consensual narrative, the collection and analysis of appropriations of the “Porto.” brand offers an under-acknowledged map of local dynamics, revealing a city where antagonistic views coexist.
The above evinces the need to issue alternative representations that challenge hegemonic discourses; as well as the need to promote critical thinking and public awareness, namely of the mechanisms that work to reduce them. Acknowledging the potential of design as a social tool,we issue two recommendations: that in order to cultivate a paradigm of plurality and citizen awareness, the word representation is employed instead of identity, when referring to representations of places; and that in order to produce representations that effectively reveal and enhance local singularities, the retrieval and re-creation of local aesthetics and narratives is a privileged methodological choice.
This paper was presented at "Digicom- 5th International Conference on Design and Digital Communication" and published in Vol. 19 of the Springer Series in Design and Innovation.
Ana Miriam Rebelo, Heitor Alvelos, Álvaro Domingues
Advances in Design and Digital Communication II. DIGICOM 2021. Springer Series in Design and Innovation, vol 19.
Martins, N., Brandão, D. (eds). Springer, 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89735-2_52
Acknowledgements
This article is part of the research project “Visual and semantic identities of the city of Porto: an ascertainment of the contributions of informal dwelling”, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the European Social Fund (ESF), under the grant PD/BD/150641/2020.
The following people generously contributed to this paper by allowing us to reproduce their
images: Inês Barbosa, Laura Gonçalves, Luís Camanho and Pedro Ferreira. To all of them, many
thanks.
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