Developing an explanatory hypothesis for urban graphic heritage through the observation of physical traces

Abstract

Urban graphic heritage has recently come to the fore connected to cities’ economic, social, cultural, and environmental development through design. This paper charts the development of urban graphic heritage through a working hypothesis that traces progress from the rough terrain of exploration towards the more nuanced domain of explanation. Graphic heritage is shown to have evolved across several unconnected fields each in need of better designation. At the core of the argument is the importance attached to naming fields to ensure that intellectual histories may be better understood in the service of design research and heritage studies.

Keywords:

• Graphic heritage
• urban heritage
• urban graphic heritage
• design
• graphic design

Introduction

Valencia in Spain was the World Design Capital in 2022 (World Design Capital Valencia 2022), selected as the showcase city for the World Design Organization’s recognition of how cities use design to drive economic, social, cultural, and environmental development (World Design Organisation). Graphic design featured prominently in the event through the signature project TiposQueImportan, an initiative that aimed to ‘delve into the history of Valencian graphic design and its fundamental role in daily life’ and ‘recover and protect the urban graphic heritage of the city’ (TiposQueImportan). The foregrounding of urban graphic heritage as a distinct entity invites scrutiny of the semantic connotations in the established fields of urban design, graphic design, and heritage studies. Further consideration should also be given to the existing and emerging perspectives of urban heritage and graphic heritage, the two most important influences providing the backdrop to this paper. For example, urban heritage is an established field whereas graphic heritage has evolved since 2015 simultaneously across several domains of theory and practice that delineate urban graphic heritage (Harland et al. 2023, 2–3). Consequently, there is the potential for confusion in the way such matters are discussed in heritage and design, calling for more precision in language use.

In this paper, urban graphic heritage serves to classify a concept through the amalgamation of ideas from several fields. Its association with graphic design has been emphasised but it is hardly recognised. Concepts must be clear concerning what they refer to, compared to the vagueness that ‘deter the identification of appropriate empirical instances’ (Blumer 1969, 143). Considered from another perspective, ‘putting one’s job into words is part of the skill required to perform it’ (Benjamin 1936, 23). In the context of urban heritage, writing precision and the appropriate use of reference terms are important for the rehabilitation of urban quarters (Tiesdell, Oc, and Heath 1996, 171). The same is said in emergent areas of design research (Poggenpohl, Chayutsahakij, and Jeamsinkul 2004, 579).

Naming is an important activity and one that serves several overlapping functions. It discriminates among objects or ideas on a continuum from coarse to fine. It identifies something according to classification or particularity. Through the act of naming, an abstraction is created that serves as a reference and positions the concept in relation to others. Successful naming is a social activity; the reference and meaning of a word must be shared, i.e. in circulation and currency.

In a sense, language use is a record of intellectual history; the creation of new words reveal discovery or development in science or technology, or the transformation of meaning reveals a shift in social understanding and perception. (2004, 580)

Hence, urban graphic heritage is explored to better understand the relationship between graphic design, graphic heritage, and urban heritage, whilst also acknowledging the extension of ‘linguistic landscapes’ (Landry and Bourhis 1997), ‘geosemiotics’ (Scollon and Scollon 2003), ‘typographic landscapes’ (Silva Gouveia, Lena Farias, and Souza Gatto 2009), ‘semiotic landscapes’ (Jaworski and Thurlow 2010), and ‘typographic landscaping’ (Järlehed and Jaworski 2015) towards ‘graphic landscaping’ (Pan, Harland, and Barnes 2022). The aim is to provide an orderly description of the context from which urban graphic heritage has emerged and to define the way heritage is communicated in urban settings.

Environment-behaviour research and the tools associated with ‘observing physical traces’ (Zeisel 2006, 159–190) provide the methodological framework for understanding the development of the concept and its defining characteristics. ‘Exploratory hypotheses serve as the basis for observing and gathering data about the topic and then for describing and understanding it’ (2006, 33). Hence, the research follows three main aspects associated with observing physical traces, involving the development of concepts, the formulation of hypotheses, and the testing of empirical data (2006, p. 34).

The research is exploratory and descriptive to identify the extent to which ‘graphic images’ (Mitchell 1986, 10–13) are significant in urban graphic heritage. Empirical data is drawn from locations in the author’s archive, and from recent projects that emphasise heritage. Example locations support three stages advocated in the development of a hypothesis to reflect exploration, classification, and explanation (Zeisel 2006, 159–190). Observation and visual data (photography) feature extensively in support of developing a hypothesis that edifies the key concepts that contribute to understanding urban graphic heritage. In this vein, the concept is framed as a ‘generating formula’ or ‘descriptive concept’ (Zeisel 2006 citing Barton and Lazarsfeld 1969) that draws together multiple observations that lead to an explanatory hypothesis (2006, 40). This is coupled with approaches associated with urbanism (Campkin and Duijzings 2016). Approaches such as everyday observation, visual ethnography, visual analysis, in situ reading, collaborative and systematic photography, documenting inscription, visual comparison, mapping, and walking (2016, end matter) are utilised. Hence, the featured locations and accompanying photographs serve to act as traces of urban graphic heritage. In this pursuit, the research followed a definition of heritage as ‘a version of the past received through objects and display, representations and engagements, spectacular locations and events, memories and commemorations, and the preparation of places for cultural purposes and consumption’ (Waterton and Watson 2015, 1). Place in this regard is especially pertinent.

Developing an exploratory hypothesis for urban graphic heritage

Investigators initially formulate exploratory hypotheses based on theory and previous empirical data; then they use preliminary, unfocused investigation to decide what specific data they will use to confront the hypotheses. (Zeisel 2006, 37)

The emergence of urban graphic heritage can be traced back to cultural links between South America and Europe a decade ago. Important in this is the Cidade Gráfica (Metro Arquitetos 2023) exhibition at Itaú Cultural in São Paulo (between 20 November 2014 and 4 January 2015) that viewed the contemporary metropolis through the lens of graphic design. The exhibition challenged the so-called rigid definitions of graphic design to incorporate more critical, creative, and poetic interpretations of the city. Through a synthesis of academic research and practical projects, the exhibition featured content at the interface between design and visual arts. For example, one project highlighted the advertising spaces at bus shelters that did not display route information; another emphasized the juxtaposition of large advertising posters on the side of buildings that contrasted with the urban fabric’s poverty in the city’s ‘Minhocão’ area before the Clean City Law initiative (the Lei Cidade Limpa was proclaimed in 2006, prohibiting outdoor advertising in São Paulo and the dismantling of billboards).

Aside from the prominence given to graphic design, the exhibition inadvertently gave rise to an early association with cultural heritage in Europe. This manifested in the Cidade Gráfica: Signs and Advertisements from Lisbon in the twentieth Century exhibition in Lisbon at Museu do Design e da MODA in November 2016 (Cidade Gráfica 2016) that aspired to preserve the ‘visual heritage’ of Lisbon in the twentieth century (Sérgio 2017). Based on the collection of graphic designers Rita Múrias and Paulo Barata, iconic examples of Lisbon’s graphic identity through lettering on signs and facades were the focus of interest, showcasing neon and directional signs. This was aligned with the notion of ‘graphic memory’ (Lena Farias 2014, 202). Staged in collaboration with the Projeto Letreiro Galeria (concerning the preservation of now-defunct commercial and industrial signs repurposed as examples of cultural heritage and graphic memory of the city) the exhibition was characterized by a concern for património gráfico (graphic heritage). From these two exhibitions, graphic heritage emerged as a fusion of graphic design, graphic memory, visual heritage, cultural heritage and urban culture, with a shared concern for the protection and preservation of commercial and industrial signs. Thus, the utilisation of graphic design as a framing device to view the city provided the basis for a classifying hypothesis.

Coinciding with the ascendency of património gráfico in Portugal, the Italian counterpart of patrimonio grafico emerged to stand for the art of engraving (Filatti Mazza and Rovetta 2015). From this point, graphic heritage has been utilised for several disconnected and diverse topics as broad as graphic-literary mapping, imitation in Renaissance Art, urban heritage, eighteenth-century architectural drawings, and football club crests (Harland et al. 2023, 3). It has also evolved to symbolize a ‘movement’ on the Iberian peninsula concerned with the safeguarding of disregarded signs in Spanish and Portuguese cities in response to the homogeneity imposed on urban places by large corporations (Kassam 2021). The Iberian Network in Defence of Graphic Heritage (Red Ibérica en Defensa del Patrimonio Gráfico) initiative collates projects from diverse fields such as graphic design, architecture, urban and cultural management, and history, for the preservation of the graphic identity of neighbourhoods (Rayitas azules 2020). Their stated overall aim and ongoing activity is to safeguard and protect all the commercial graphics of our streets as graphic heritage, concerned with the safeguarding of disregarded signs in Spanish and Portuguese cities in response to the homogeneity imposed on urban places by large corporations (Kassam 2021). Urban graphic heritage as it is defined in the context of the earlier noted TiposQueImportan project is derived from a close association with the network. For example, TiposQueImportan features the now obscured fascia lettering for Relojeria Filiberto Leon, a watch repair shop located at Carrer de Ribera, 3. This typifies the Patrimonio Gráfico project. The fascia panel is also one example from Juan Nava’s ‘Letras Recuperades’ project (Recuperades and Filiberto Leon 2023). The shop closed in 2017 after nearly 80 years as a family business through three generations, and 115 years of activity in Valencia (Valero 2017). See Figure 1. Within a year the fascia was concealed behind a new sign for Xis Khrim, an Asian Ice Cream Shop.

Figure 1. Fascia lettering for Relojeria Filiberto Leon. Photography: © 2014 Robert Harland.

The sign also demonstrates how language use is problematic. The Relojeria Filiberto Leon sign would be more accurately described as lettering, or typography, rather than graphic design which is better understood as combining different kinds of graphic imagery. The two are different. Although not representative of all things that may be classified as ‘graphic’, the spatial context for the TiposQueImportan project, the concerns for Red Ibérica en Defensa del Patrimonio Gráfico, and the Cidade Gráfica initiative in Lisbon necessitates a need to prefix graphic heritage with a word that differentiates it from other contexts where graphic heritage displays. For example, Barnes (2023) adopts the term to discuss the redesign of club crests as part of the development of a branding strategy to increase revenue for football teams in England and Europe.

In contrast to the recent emergence of graphic heritage, there is an established field of urban heritage. Adding the concept of ‘graphic’ to this provides an opportunity to also contribute to that field, for reasons that will become apparent. These empirical observations and theoretical speculation provide the basis for a classifying hypothesis based on several specific scenarios and historical precedents.

Formulating a classifying hypothesis for urban graphic heritage

Classifying hypotheses orders available information so that researchers can more clearly define their problem and decide how to study it further. (Zeisel 2006, 38)

A close association between heritage and the graphic identity of cities has been in gestation on several continents since the late twentieth century. Neon signs had been recognized for their appeal in the way aspects of classical heritage had been portrayed in the form of popular culture (Reed 2001, 152) in Las Vegas (with obvious reference to Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour 1977) and as visual heritage (Crowe 1991, 37). ‘They [neon signs] can contribute to the quality of a street and can be a significant character defining feature of a building. For these reasons, it is important to identify and include them in surveys of historic resources’ (1991, 37). Henceforth, in 1996 The Neon Museum was established in Las Vegas for ‘collecting, preserving, studying and exhibiting iconic Las Vegas signs for educational, historic, arts and cultural enrichment’ (The Neon Museum). A decade later, interest in the rescue of decaying letters surfaced through the private funding of the Buchstabenmuseum (Museum of Letters) in Berlin in 2005. The museum, which opened to the public in 2008, was dedicated to preserving, restoring, and exhibiting signage from Berlin and around the world, claiming to house the world’s largest collection of three-dimensional letters (Buchstabenmuseum).

At the same time, commercial and industrial signs gained recognition for their landmark status. The neon Itaú sign in São Paulo and the Farine Five Roses neon sign in Montreal are two examples of large-scale protected signs said to have iconic status. See Figure 2. The Itaú sign is significant in that its protection is implicit as part of a large multifunctional complex of residential, commercial, services, and leisure use, listed in 2005 by Condephaat, The Council for the Defense of Historical, Archaeological, Artistic and Tourist Heritage in the State of São Paulo. In contrast, the Farine Five Roses sign became a treasured city landmark, representative of the way an old sign could spark memories (Moy 2018, citing Matt Soar) as a detail in Montreal’s industrial urban fabric. Such was the popular appeal of the sign that heritage activists were inspired to advocate for the importance of preserving iconic signs that contributed to the city’s identity.

Figure 2. Left – Itaú commercial sign atop the Conjunto Nacional mall on Avenida Paulista in São Paulo, Brazil, a listed building since 2005 for its historical and architectural heritage. Right – Farine Five Roses neon sign – an industrial sign in Montreal’s former industrial centre around the Lachine Canal. Photography: © 2010 Robert Harland.

However, neither of these were the first signs to be valued as heritage objects. They follow earlier examples recognized for their historical and cultural value. One of the more distinctive is at Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, featuring the prominent Ghirardelli lettering displayed on the top of the complex. Its location dominates the former site of the D. Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, deemed a City Landmark since 1970 and listed in the National Register of Historic Properties in 1982. Another example is The Colgate Clock on the Jersey City waterfront, a historical landmark reminiscent of the Colgate–Palmolive & Company former site until the demolition of the eight-story warehouse upon which it sat until 1985. It’s now a permanent local landmark on the Jersey City Waterfront. See Figure 3.

Figure 3. Left – Ghirardelli commercial sign atop Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco, a formally recognized city landmark since 1970. Right – The Colgate Clock in Jersey City facing the Hudson River. Photography: © 2013 & 2014 Robert Harland.

Of these, the Farine Five Roses sign deserves closer attention, its status having attracted public interest. This was prompted when the sign was turned off in 2006 after a change of company ownership, inciting a social media campaign supported by Heritage Montreal. The long-term impact is that the sign has since become recognized as part of the city’s heritage (Bertin and Paquette 2018, 112) and ‘retro icon’ (Handberg 2015, 78). It was granted heritage status in 2020 as one of 19 commercial signs appreciated for their presence in the ‘landscape heritage’ and their ‘landscape, aesthetic and social value’ (Farine Five Roses Art Project). The sign is now part of the wider Montréal Signs Project (Montreal Signs Project) initiative that advocates for Montréal’s sign heritage concerning the preservation of commercial and civic signs in the city (some are on permanent exhibit at Concordia University’s Loyola campus). By comparison, but different in scale, commercial fascia signs and other ‘urban graphics’ attracted interest for their historical and social context in Bilbao (Gómez 2007; Koldo 2007) during the first decade of the new century. Central to this was the distinctive lettering on fascia panels (see Figure 4) compared to Bilbao’s characteristic floorscape, its emblematic buildings, and urban design (Bilbao con todas las letras).

Figure 4. Distinctive lettering on fascia panels in Bilbao, as featured in Atxaga Arnedo Koldo’s book Bilbao Tipográfico: Los Rótulos Comerciales y Otras Gráficas Urbanas (translated as Typographic Bilbao: Commercial signs and other urban graphics). Photography: © 2022 Robert Harland.

In the early twenty-first century, this preoccupation with commercial and industrial signs spread further afield. For example, coinciding with Lisbon’s Cidade Gráfica exhibition the concern for preserving neon signs emerged in Hong Kong, where interest surfaced in conserving the city’s ‘neon heritage’. The Hong Kong Neon Heritage project in 2017 (Theng 2020, 3) documented how the city’s neon signs denote leisure, food, commerce, and other kinds of shops and services aligned with Hong Kong’s ‘bicultural heritage’ (Kwok and Coppoolse 2017, 89). See Figure 5. These have been categorized to reveal Hong Kong’s history of visual culture through the acknowledgement of graphic design (Kwok 2020, 554).

Figure 5. A selection of neon signs displaying a distinct aspect of Hong Kong’s twentieth-century visual culture through graphic design. Photography: © 2007 Robert Harland.

In sum, this spacio-temporal overview spans the four continents of South America, North America, Europe, and Asia, over three decades. Formative associations are drawn between the notion of visual heritage, conservation, preservation and discarded neon signs. During the first decade of the millennium, the scope widened to the preservation, restoration, and exhibition of vernacular signs and soon after public interest attracted the interest of heritage activists in 2006. Through tracing the formulation of an exploratory hypothesis based on empirical observations, this lineage of language use is important for the preservation of graphic signs in the city. From this, graphic heritage has emerged to consolidate earlier references to visual heritage, sign heritage, landscape heritage, and neon heritage, in the context of popular culture, visual culture, urban graphics, and graphic design. This provides a classifying hypothesis focussed on furthering the notion of graphic heritage. Urban heritage has been noted earlier as an important domain. But what is urban heritage?

What is urban heritage?

The notion of urban heritage is mostly absent from the various forces that have shaped the theoretical and practical concerns of graphic heritage in its early formation. Hence, the notion of urban heritage needs substantiation. Introducing this viewpoint will provide a form of ‘empirical testing’ (Zeisel 2006, 41) before presenting a concrete explanation of what exactly is meant by a graphic design perspective on the city in the context of urban heritage.

The evolution of heritage since the late nineteenth century has been imbued with a strong sense of urban context due to the social and political upheavals of various mid-nineteenth-century European revolts that followed the French Revolution. More recently the concerns of tourism and sustainability have come to the fore. For example, global heritage organisations – United Nations, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) and ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) – have turned their attention towards sustainable urban development through a ‘people-centred approaches in urban heritage conservation, and a more holistic, integrated, dynamic, and inclusive approach for the sustainable management of cities and their surrounding landscape’ (Giliberto in De Waal et al. 2022, 15–16). However, although awareness of heritage is attributed to the late nineteenth century, urban heritage became established much later.

Urban heritage was coined by Gustavo Giovannoni in 1931 (Hernández and de la Calle-Vaquero n.d.), the same year as the First International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments: The Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments (1931 Athens Charter) This is recognized as the first important international reference for urban heritage (Ripp and Rodwell 2015, 263). It is said to have evolved with two meanings: (1) tangible and intangible heritage situated in urban areas; and (2) reference to the ‘city as heritage, a special type of cultural property that is mainly associated with neighborhoods, urban centers, and historic cities’ (Hernández and de la Calle-Vaquero n.d.).

UNESCO defines urban heritage as comprising three main categories that allow for the consideration of known phenomena, ordinary things, and previously unacknowledged facets of the built environment that meet the criteria for heritage designation, as follows:

• Monumental heritage of exceptional cultural value;

• Non-exceptional heritage elements but present in a coherent way with a relative abundance;

• New urban elements to be considered (for instance):

  •  – The urban built form;

  •  – The open space: streets, public open spaces;

  •  – Urban infrastructures: material networks and equipments.

(Recommendation on the Historical Urban Landscape n.d.)

For example, the focus on historic areas including their industrial and vernacular quarters created and used by people (Ripp and Rodwell 2015, 241). Thus, urban heritage has wide-ranging connotations.

Urban heritage is fundamental to the preservation of the historic urban landscape (Labadi and Logan 2016, 2). Use of the term peppers discussion about heritage places (Bartolini 2014; De Waal et al. 2022; Nasser 2003) but there is no consensus about what it is. It spans research inquiry through urban heritage studies (Donnellan 2022, 68) and practical application (Bartolini 2014, 519) such as the designation of revitalized historical urban areas such as the Castlefield Urban Heritage Park in the UK (Tiesdell, Oc, and Heath 1996, 82–84) or the notion of urban heritage interpretation (Giliberto 2022, 15). It loosely stands as a metaphor for ‘heritage place’ through planning, conservation, tourism, and sustainability (Nasser 2003). For example, it has also been analogized as ‘urban tissue’, meaning urban form and appearance in ‘the nature and density of land uses, height of buildings, width and pattern of circulation routes (roads, alleys, footpaths), building typologies, as well as specific infrastructure components, [and] the size and format of individual plots’ (Steinberg 1996, 472). Politically, it implies protest against urban renewal in the context of the preservation and formation of urban heritage discourse (Lu 2016, 330).

Appositely, the ‘civic experience’ of urban heritage is facilitated through the interpretation of buildings and places, including vehicle and pedestrian signage, as well as heritage colours, text, trail leaflets, illustrated maps, brochures, and markers (Goodey 2006, 10–19). Collectively this disparate range of objects does not reside in one domain. Places and buildings are different to text and colour. However, they may all be considered graphic images, if aligned with an expansive interpretation of graphic design, as will next be discussed.

Interposing ‘graphic’ in urban heritage

Graphic design has been cited as providing the basis for much of what is discussed above. It is said to reveal aspects of daily life in Valencia; fracture rigid definitions to position São Paulo as a ‘graphic city’; fuse notions of graphic memory, visual heritage, and cultural heritage of Lisbon; reveal Hong Kong’s history of visual culture; and underpin resistance to the homogenous practices that seek to change the historic graphic identity of neighbourhoods in Portuguese and Spanish cities. However, none of these initiatives state what is meant by graphic design.

Before formal attempts at the definition of graphic design emerged in the early 1990s it had already been defined in terms of its social contribution to the ‘legibility of the world’ (Moles 1986). Similar to the Cidade Gráfica exhibition in São Paulo, this contrasted with (but did not exclude) the narrow interpretations that soon followed fixated on a synthesis of typography, illustration, and photography for printing (Livingston and Livingston 1992, 19–20). Legibility in this wide-ranging sense analogized page design as a metaphor for understanding the design of a city (Lynch 1960, 122; Moles 1986, 120–21).

Before the TiposQueImportan project an earlier use of the term urban graphic heritage emphasized a graphic design perspective on urban heritage at the scale of urban design (Harland and Xu 2021). Interposing ‘graphic’ between ‘urban’ and ‘heritage’ took as its starting point not only legibility as it is alluded to above, but also the notion of the ‘graphic image’ as it stood for architectural imagery, designs, diagrams, graphs, statues, or pictures, that may be abstract, non-representational or structural (Mitchell 1986, 10–13). Hence, urban graphic heritage may be taken to reflect a more balanced portrayal of its three main constituent parts. Aligning this to the civic experience of urban heritage in a notable heritage location will next demonstrate how this may be better understood. In doing so, an explanatory hypothesis is proffered.

Confirming an explanatory hypothesis for urban graphic heritage

Investigators, look at the implications of their problem organization and at the data they gather, to develop tentative answers to the questions ‘How did something occur?’ and ‘Why did someone do something’. (Zeisel 2006, 40)

The earlier discussion about the exploratory and classifying stages of developing the hypothesis explored the theoretical and empirical evidence to substantiate urban graphic heritage. This provided the groundwork for explaining how this plays out in an urban heritage context at the city scale. For the final phase of developing the hypothesis, the earlier discussion about the nature of civic experience of urban heritage is applicable.

In this section, a theoretical perspective is drawn from several established but closely related domains that have evolved since 1997, and have been synthesised for their common but inconsistently defined interest in graphic forms. This stage utilises graphic landscaping as a design and semiotic framework, devised as a thread that stitches together the related concepts of linguistic landscape, geosemiotics, typographic landscape, semiotic landscape, and typographic landscaping. See Table 1. Each of these incorporates graphic form but is inconsistent in their portrayals of what it stands for. For example, typographic landscapes consider the visual, aesthetic and cultural identity of the city constructed through its graphic elements (Silva Gouveia, Lena Farias, and Souza Gatto 2009, 344–346), typography being ‘a subset of graphic elements in the urban environment’ (2009, 345). In the domain of typographic landscaping (Järlehed and Jaworski 2015, 120–121), this is similarly acknowledged but more as ‘graphic knowledge’ (Spitzmüller’s 2012; 2015) and ‘graphic sensibility’ (Jaffe 2000, 509). The consideration of the relationship between the ‘graphical and typographical Gestalt’ has similarly been called for in the ‘young disciplines’ of script-linguistics and grapho-stylistics (Wachendorff 2016, 61–79). More elusive is the reference to ‘visual images’ and ‘nonverbal communication’ in the semiotic landscape of Jaworski and Thurlow (2010, 2).

Table 1. Established and new domains concerned with the relationship between graphic form and landscape.

Graphic Landscaping (Pan, Harland, and Barnes 2022)	A synthesis of common linguistic, typographic, and semiotic landscape considerations of graphic forms through ‘graphic knowledge’
Typographic Landscaping (Järlehed and Jaworski 2015)	Interrelation between meaning making, social practice, writing systems, and typographic metaphor
Semiotic Landscape (Jaworski and Thurlow 2010)	The interaction and interrelation between written discourse and discursive modalities, visual discourse and spatial practice
Typographic Landscape (Silva Gouveia, Lena Farias, and Souza Gatto 2009).	Reading the urban environment through typography and lettering with the help of perception theory
Geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon 2003)	The semiotic relationship between the social meaning and placement of signs
Linguistic Landscape (Landry and Bourhis 1997)	The study of visible writing systems

From the perspective of graphic design as a sub-discipline of design, how these may be framed as graphic landscaping for heritage draws from the implicit association with graphic design. ‘As a sub-discipline of design, graphic design intervenes and is influential in the production of graphic knowledge’ (Pan, Harland, and Barnes 2022, 2112). Across the linguistic, typographic, (geo)semiotic landscapes, graphic elements comprise all forms of graphic images such as typography, illustrations, photographs, icons, arrows, colours, and other symbolic forms (2021, 5). Hence, the multidisciplinary nature of graphic design can be interpreted through the constituent elements: graphic elements; semiotic/linguistic elements; and (typo)graphic elements to form a graphic ideology. This has been depicted as a framework for graphic landscaping that spans design and semiotics to also incorporate linguistic concerns. The design perspective draws from the scalar depiction of type design, typographic design, graphic design, and urban design (Harland 2016, 5) to establish parameters of design discourse, overlayed with the scalar semiotic concerns for written discourse and other ‘discursive modalities’, namely ‘visual images, nonverbal communication, architecture, and the built environment’ (Jaworski and Thurlow 2010, 2). See Figure 6. This forms the basis for an empirical case study about the Shanghai Bund, a significant urban heritage context that will serve to illustrate how design and semiotics interventions combine to prove and affirm the hypothesis.

Figure 6. A graphic landscaping framework for aligning several disciplinary perspectives for the benefit of urban graphic heritage. Source: Pan, Harland, and Barnes 2022.

Testing the hypothesis for urban graphic heritage: The Shanghai Bund

‘The Bund’ is selected from one of eight case study locations featured in the Repositioning Graphic Heritage (Harland and Xu 2021, 30–69) project undertaken by researchers at Loughborough University and Tongji University, four each from the United Kingdom and China respectively. The three additional Chinese heritage locations, all in Shanghai, were Tianzifang, a creative enclave in the city’s French Concession; Xintiandi, a flagship urban heritage development; and the satellite English-themed Thames Town. The UK locations were drawn from the Maritime Mercantile City of Liverpool (a now delisted World Heritage Site); the King Richard III Centre in Leicester; Blackpool’s Comedy Carpet; and the grade II listed Zebra Crossing near Abbey Road Studios, in London. Each of these merits discussion in their own right, but a focus on The Bund is highly relevant, not only for its heritage credentials but also for its location opposite Lujiazui, a recent new development on the opposite side of the Huangpu River.

The Bund is the former treaty port area active during the period of the former Shanghai International Settlement between 1863 to 1943. Having been redeveloped and reopened in 2010, the mile-long waterfront is recognized for its urban regeneration and colonial heritage status. As one of the world’s most recognisable, written about and photographed skylines (Pendlebury and Porfyriou 2017, 429; Taylor 2002, 125), it displays a complex array of urban graphic heritage (Harland and Xu 2021, 44–47). Not only does this present an opportunity for visual heritage but also verbal heritage, meaning in this case the contested use of language manifest in place names. For example, in 1949 the main road that runs along the waterfront was renamed Zhongshan Road in acknowledgement of twentieth-century Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Republic of China.

Snapshots of objects that comply with the civic experience of urban heritage exemplify the Bund as a heritage place that spans architecture, monuments, statues, designs, inscriptions, colour, nocturnal lighting, and more. For example, there is an abundant variety of architectural styles on display such as the HSBC Neo-Classical building; the Art Deco Bank of Communications building; the low-relief script, figures, and free-standing sculptures; heritage commemoration plaques, street nameplates and pedestrian wayfinding. See Figure 7. These are supplemented by more ephemeral information typically in the form of printed matter available at a tourist information point, or screen-based information that may be accessed on a smartphone.

Figure 7. The Shanghai Bund. From top to bottom and left to right: View of a section The Bund; The landmark The Gutzlaff Signal Tower; Lo-relief of Chinese script and figures above the entrance to the Bank of China building; Commemorative plaque for The Bank of Communication Art Deco building; Reproduction lion statue outside the former Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank; Road sign for Zhongshan Road in the style of all Shanghai street nameplates; Map of The Bund displayed on the pedestrian wayfinding system. Photography: © 2017 to 2020 Robert Harland.

Conclusion

This paper has emphasized the means through which graphic heritage and urban heritage are connected to establish the basis for urban graphic heritage. Tracing the onset of graphic heritage through the interlinked stages of exploratory, classifying, and explanatory hypotheses has enabled theoretical and empirical observations to portray urban graphic heritage as a new field. Furthering this pursuit has benefitted from identifying graphic heritage as a category that spans not only design and heritage but also graphic design, graphic memory, visual heritage, cultural heritage, and urban heritage, as an interdisciplinary domain of interest. To this can be added a succession of concepts that begins with linguistic landscape leading to the notion of graphic landscaping.

The term urban graphic heritage has been shown to have gained prominence as part of Valencia’s stint as the World Design Capital for 2022. It evolved from the emergence of graphic heritage from a resurgence in looking at the city through the lens of graphic design, a viewpoint traced back to the mid-twentieth century. Although graphic design and graphic designers are often cited as being influential in justifications for recovering and protecting the graphic heritage of the city, the practice is rarely explained beyond the context of challenging conventional definitions. The consequence is vagueness or intellectual indifference to the importance associated with the development of ideas and concepts, the relevance of classification, and the grounding of meaning. This paper has traced the evolution of urban graphic heritage that not only justifies its relationship to graphic design but also contextualises this in relation to the civic experience of urban heritage.

It has also been shown that although graphic heritage first came into circulation in 2015, for this paper its conception as a heritage phenomenon has been tracked to the mid-1990s at the time when neon signs were deemed important enough to establish a museum. This provided a concentrated place to learn from the neon lights of Las Vegas two decades after they had been celebrated as graphic signs in ‘architectural heritage’ (Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour 1977, back cover). To maintain the integrity of the research, the concentration has remained on explicit references to graphic heritage. However, several other recent studies also link design to heritage (Lees-Maffei and Houze 2022). In some graphic design is implicit (Atkins 2020; Benus 2022; Farias 2022; Harland and Liguori 2019; Jenkins 2021; van Eeden 2022) but graphic heritage goes unacknowledged. More research is needed in this regard to extrapolate the ways graphic heritage is embedded in other disciplines.

Finally, the example of the Shanghai Bund has illustrated how the many facets of urban graphic heritage are displayed in a historic urban setting. In this, graphic heritage is interpreted through the visitor’s interest in the urban fabric, and the infrastructural components that facilitate access to places. In the case of the Bund, this ranges from the large scale of the skyline to the smaller lettering on inscriptions or language used on street nameplates. Urban graphic heritage in this sense is both a visual (tangible) and verbal (intangible) phenomenon.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert G. Harland

Robert G. Harland is a Reader in Urban Graphic Heritage at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom. Through the lens of graphic design as urban design and a concentration on civic engagement within urban heritage, his research is guided by the question: How do graphic objects facilitate the function of cities and urban places?