Visualizing Multi-Racialism in Singapore: Graphic Design as a Tool for Ideology and Policy in Nation Building

Abstract

For Anthony D. Smith, “Imagery has always played a crucial role in politics and nowhere more so than in our understanding of nationalism.” The truth of this statement, he says, is exemplified by recent and prominent “‘uses of imagery’...in attempts to explain the formation of nations and the spread of nationalism.”1 From the turn of the twentieth century to the contemporary era, graphic design—in the form of banners, posters, and print advertisements—has been used in the process of nation-building to create awareness; affect behavioral change; and represent notions of everyday experience, identity, and ideology.2 However, the design/representation matrix is not static; the practice of graphic design concerns meaningmaking in the production and consumption of knowledge, and this [meaning—making bears a direct relationship to social processes and institutions—in this instance, how information about socio-cultural identity in the Republic of Singapore is commodified and mediated for consumption as public knowledge about ethnicity and national consciousness]. This case study focuses on graphic design as a tool for national ideology and policy in Singapore, particularly the visualizing of multi-racialism as a continuing reference for national identity and social harmony.