Food, fashion, beliefs you name it. People from all over the world have come up with a myriad of unique ways to do it all. Design is no exception. It takes on many forms and is characterized by different qualities from country to country. Among the most reliable styles the world offers is Scandinavian design. Serene color palettes, sleek lines, and heavy use of natural resources, only make up one aspect of its best qualities. Scandinavian design’s critical acclaim and staying power can be attributed to its functionality, utility, and naturally, its timeless beauty.
The design elements which were discussed last class were straightforward fairly balanced in terms of showing designs that could be considered cultural appropriation versus ones that could be looked at as appreciation. After having a discussion about examples of things that could be considered cultural appreciation, I think that to anyone who isn’t studying this like we are would not think of cultural appropriation after watching How to Train Your Dragon, one of the movie examples discussed.
In Sweden, Denmark and Norway, Scandinavian-American relations had hit a new low a couple years ago over what they say are cases of cultural appropriation using offensive and racist images of Vikings. Specifically they are objecting to TV ads for Capital One credit cards and the use of the name “Vikings” by the Minnesota NFL franchise. I had forgotten about the capital one commercials until now and there were quite a lot of em portraying Vikings. Then we come to the continued discussion of a football team using a logo and calling it freedom of speech and not seeing the bigger picture that its cultural appropriation, just because its a white European culture still makes it appropriation.
But there is still appreciation out there after seeing the video game that was discussed on Tuesday, a video game created by Swedish developers and uses design and some cultural content/ folklore gave us the discussion that that was not appropriation it was more in the realm of appreciation. The video game didn’t represent the game negatively, the creators were Swedish and in my opinion it looked like an independent video game, a game that was made for fun or education and not for a profit.