It’s kinda strange; my brothers are going back to school and my mom’s teaching in the classroom, yet I’m just… hangin’. Granted, I graduated last year, but I didn’t comprehend this odd experience. But even without school, there’s much to learn. In fact, I’m bouncing back to a creative thinking course I took that explored various ways of building your brain. One of these methods was ethnography.
Ethno-what?
You know me and my love of words, so here’s the definition:
Ethnography
(n) the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures
An off-shoot of anthropology, ethnography narrows its research to a people and their culture. This could be a very distant time period or America in the 70’s. Could even be a different country in the present day. We’re blessed to live in a culturally diverse world that has so much to teach us about how people value agriculture, religion, family, and more.
Obviously some people spend their entire career exploring the inner workings of a culture, but thankfully that’s not what my course required. In fact, you can get inspired by a few hours of book reading and internet surfing (I’ll always suggest books over the internet because the digital space can be easily edited). Sort of depends on your use for it and overall interest. I tend to spend more time perusing history because I find a rhythm and lose track of time. As so happened when I completed this mini project and did an ethnography of Mayan culture.
My Walk with the Mayans
If you’re interested in Mayan culture, I highly suggest you do your own research. I’m pulling from what I discovered a couple years ago and, in true Samantha fashion, it’s a bundle of words and abbreviations. :D
As a population of 2-10 million people at any given time, Mayans constructed around 40 cities across three various areas. This seems pretty big, but they weren’t a scattered people. Instead, they stuck together in their rainforest terrain. They contributed to math and astronomy, developing systems like 0 and the calculator. They knew a wide variety of languages, Spanish being one. They would burn forests in order to clear land for corn, beans, squash, and cassava. Some other goods I found they were known for were chocolate, rubber, tree bark paper, jade, quetzal feathers, and marine shells.
Priests governed the Mayan people, their temples and plazas serving as ritualistic and political centers. They served nature gods, potentially because there weren’t many rivers. To their benefit, they created irrigation systems in order to ensure growth. Other than their religious guidance, they were known as war wagers. This passion for conquest also seems to have been their downfall.
How Do You Apply Ethnography?
I did this for a “graphic design” class, so you can imagine the hours of headscratching. How do I apply this to design? Well, when I scribbled all my notes, I didn’t have a design in mind. I had a story rolling through my head.
Fiction writers tend to create new cultures or put their own spin on a common trope. The process of ethnography is beneficial for recognizing what needs to be included. Not everything you or I come up with appears in the book, but each element influences another element, which influences a scene between two characters. Going back to my walk with the Mayans, we could infer that their priestly leadership meant great respect for their gods, which would mean an outsider who disrespects their gods would be in hot water. Or tied to a burning tree. Culture and commerce influence how people interact with each other and outsiders.
Designers and other visual creatives aren’t out of luck though. Ethnographies can be more visual, exploring patterns, architecture, ritual dances, and so on. All of these elements then influence your work with colors and shapes you might not have considered. The deeper you go, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you can be inspired by.
Final Thoughts: Take Your Time
And with that, I’ll give you one last thought: take your time. It’s very easy to jump in for a few seconds, find exactly what you want, and jump back to where you were.
That’s not the goal.
When I get stuck, I research. I walk away. I explore. I avoid my mind because my thoughts don’t have the answer I need. Seek answers and knowledge beyond your own understanding. Even if the knowledge can’t help you now, it might sneak back into your conscious mind at a later date. What you don’t know could be what you need, so take a few hours to explore something new.