Fatima Tariq

I came into this degree knowing that I wanted to research on something related to Pakistan’s culture. Whether I would like to focus on cultural tourism, cultural products and handicrafts, or focus on museums and exhibitions, or anything else, I was unsure about. It was a long and worthwhile process that involved asking myself the difficult questions, speaking to people, being honest with myself about my confusions, being honest with myself about my life’s plans, thinking through things practically, and testing ideas. For instance, visiting museums and exhibitions and reflecting upon my experience brought me to the conclusion that museums is not the area I want to focus on. Similarly, visiting stores in museums and noticing my reaction as a third-person, seeing how excited I was, made me realise that products is the area that I am interested in.

This entire degree has been an introspective journey, one that I am grateful that I went on. I am happy to say that I have found a practical, tangible way to express my love for and passion to add value in supporting Pakistan’s culture, that being focusing on cultural products and handicrafts. While I do not have set plans after graduation right now and I am not planning on working on materialising my passion until I get some work experience, I am grateful to have this direction. In order to keep in touch with the cultural products field, I have made an Instagram account on which I only follow pages and businesses that are working on innovating Pakistani craft and incorporating the Urdu language in it. I will be using this Instagram account regularly in order to see what is trending in the market.

My research cautions and reminds me how niche of a market this is, but at the same time, my interviews with experts working in this space also give me hope that this is a growing market and a creative way to celebrate Pakistani culture and Urdu language. I will try to the best of my ability, to manage my passion with pragmatism, my caution with optimism, and above all, maintain my dedication to add value in this space. I thank everyone who is reading this blog. Thank you for believing in me and for your support and time. It is time to graduate from applying my imagination in an action research context to finding ways to executing my imagination in a real world context.

Onwards and upwards from here!

My last intervention took place on 21st November which involved emailing the finalised brochure to Lumhay’s team who then emailed it to Lumhay’s existing customer base. This email also included an optional survey asking customers why they are interested in certain products compared to others. So far, the response rate from customers has been low but some customers have expressed excitement regarding seeing such products in the market which they could not find before. In particular, the coasters and photo frames received the most interest, with the surveys indicating that the customers are very unique and trendy, given the song lyrics mentioned on the coasters are from today’s times. The photo frames were liked by customers because it has a poetic spin to traditional truck art design which is now saturated in the market. 

These designs will be part of the final presentation and are also displayed here, given that the presentation will be short. Originally, I used the same font for the poetry lines and the rest of the content. Based on team Lumhay’s feedback, I chose a more poetic and aesthetically pleasing font for the poetry lines. Based on feedback, I also decided to explain a little about the song/writers of the different poetry verses to engage and educate the audience.

My second last intervention took place on 15th November and involved pitching a proposal to Lumhay. I created a presentation with the cultural product line and all the final designs that were created. Based on stakeholder feedback, only the best designs and products were included, prioritising quality over quantity. Lumhay’s team was impressed with the overall brochure and content and gave me feedback on the designs. Some feedback on content writing for the designs was given in order for the content to better explain what the product is about. The final products and designs are shared in the following blog with the final intervention.

Some of the final designs are shared in the next blog about “Final Intervention” and some of the designs are shared here.

My previous interventions taught me that focusing on incorporating Urdu language in cultural products could be interesting. According to my research and interviews with companies working in this space, I have concluded my final research question to be as follows:

How can Pakistani handicrafts and cultural products incorporate and celebrate the Urdu language?

Given my personal love for Urdu poetry, I am looking forward to making this my focus for this project. 

In order to better understand how culture and national identities can be represented in design and craft, I carried out the interventions below.

First of all, I conducted a survey and asked Pakistani individuals of different ages regarding what connects them to culture. As you would expect, many people said food helps them connect to culture. People also mentioned other things like music, film, and cultural products. Within products, items ranging from clothes, scarves, shawls, to decoration pieces, coasters, crockery, souvenirs, etc. Some people also mentioned that packaging and presentation plays a huge role for them in intriguing them towards something cultural. For instance, one of my respondents mentioned that she ordered cultural food from a place that had really good packaging, although the food did not taste good. However, she still got some satisfaction from this purchase because the packaging was “Instagram worthy”. Often, cultural or non-cultural commodities get fame and attention if they are Instagram-trendy. This was an important take away for my research because it brings to light an important point that in order to give cultural products a contemporary touch, the products should ideally hold the potential to be Instagram trendy. 

For my second intervention, I went to different handicraft stores and spoke to customers there who were comfortable in answering my questions. I asked them how the cultural products that they are buying help them connect to culture and how this relates to their identity. I carried out this intervention over a few days in two cities, Lahore and Islamabad. I did this to increase my sample size and number of responses. To my surprise, people were open to engaging in this conversation when I told them about my MA project. I got a number of responses, which included (anonymous) sentences like:

“Buying cultural products strengthens my identity by giving me a way to constantly remember my identity. I have a table in my room where I place all the cultural things I buy, looking at it makes me proud of being a Pakistani.” 

“I like to buy Pakistani-made cultural products as it not only allows me to support my home country’s economy but also allows me to connect with my culture in a tangible way. When I was in undergraduate in the U.S. and my friends would see cultural products in my room, they always got intrigued and asked me where these things are from. They always got pleasantly surprised when I said Pakistan. It gives me joy to see others appreciate my culture as it increases my own appreciation for it. What intrigues me the most is seeing people try to read Urdu if it is written on a product.”

Another respondent held a particular souvenir in her hand and said, “I do not know when I will visit Lahore again. These khussay (type of shoes) represent Lahore so well. I want to buy them because I want to keep a part of Lahore with me, and because the shoes has “Lahore” written in Urdu on them. I am excited to wear these with a traditional outfit.”

These are some of the main responses I received which lead to an important learning for me which will shape my research question. For my most recent intervention, I iterated and designed a couple of cultural products and showed them to my target audience to see their response. For designing these products, I worked with the graphic designer of Lumhay, the start-up company in Islamabad, Pakistan with which I am currently working for creating cultural products. 

I showed these designs to different people and got a great response. I was told that my designs for cultural products (namely a mirror and a photo frame) struck a fine balance between being contemporary as well as uniquely cultural as they incorporated the Urdu language. I got positive feedback on having included Urdu language, something I plan to now focus on further. As for the design for the mirror, I got some feedback which will help me finalise the poetry lines for the product. These conversations were held in Urdu and thus, are not recorded. The respondents were not comfortable being photographer.

This is a niche yet very exciting space to work in. I am excited to see where my project goes from here!

In this blog, I will discuss the book, “Design Roots: Culturally Significant Designs, Products, and Practices”. The book states that material culture can give birth to a “sense of cultural particularity” that is associated with custom and tradition (9, Evans). Thus, material culture can contribute to “a local sense of identity” and render the cultural contribution artifacts to be of paramount importance (9, Evans). The further goes on to talk about the need for cultural artifacts and culturally significant products to be innovative and open to change for them to remain relevant. 

The aim of my MA project is to address this above claim regarding how to “contemporarise” cultural craft. The book talks about “re-learnings, re-appreciations and revivals of culture-specific practices” taking place around the world (1, Walker). Chapter Four highlights an important worry that in many regions around the world, young people are not taking up traditional cultural practices. Given that traditional practices are not as much of interest to the young, it makes it even more important to bring a contemporary touch to culture to make it relatable, exciting, and accessible to the current generation. This study defines products as:

“Products are confined to those that are durable (i.e. not food and drink), portable (i.e. not buildings), tangible (i.e. not music, dance, language or religion), and visually creative (i.e. not books, scripts or texts);” (11-24, Walker).

This book gives me reason to believe that cultural products are powerful tool for representing and embracing local, regional, and national identities. I look forward to exploring this topic area further.

Works Cited

Walker, Stuart , Martyn Evans , Tom Cassidy , Jeyon Jung , and Amy Twigger Holroyd , ed. Design Roots: Culturally Significant Designs, Products, and Practices. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018. Bloomsbury Design Library. Web. 4 Aug. 2022. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474241823>.

Even though craft and design is a powerful source of national identity, there is not a lot of literature directly talking about this topic, which makes it an exciting area to look at. Along with collecting primary data, I also looked at some secondary data and hope to continue to look for more as I find more sources. 

In this blog, I am sharing findings from the article, Developing Cultural Products to Promote Local Culture: A Marketing Design for the Former Tainan State Magistrate Residence, Mapping craft in contemporary india: Dilli Haat and Dastkari Haat samiti’s Crafts Maps, and Sustaining crafts and livelihoods: Handmade in India.

The first article talks about how cultural products can help represent a region’s culture and market a place as a tourist destination which can further contribute to that region’s representation. Cultural features are “embedded” into products and can help “retain regional images” and showcase their history. The article refers to cultural products as “cultural ambassadors” (Chang et al., 2). Culture can partially be communicated through products. Cultural products are cultural, emotional, as well as commercial tools that possess the ability of storytelling. The article also shares UNESCO’s definition of the term “cultural products” which is as follows:

“The specificity of cultural goods and services, which, as vectors of identity, values, and meaning, must not be treated as mere commodities or consumer goods” (UNESCO, 2011) [Chang et al., 3].

In the development of emotional connection with regional culture, designing a creative cultural product has become popular in allowing people to connect to their regional identity. A cultural product that depicts a region’s identity also provides a marketing channel for the regional culture to communicate with people who want to explore their identity in that manner. The article talks about certain Taiwanese cultural products such as the Dong-Cha amulet, the clock tower and certain toy Figures that depict the historical event of the site successfully transform cultural symbolism and represent an integral part of the history of Tainan City. Thus, a cultural product can serve as “a vehicle for sharing, experiencing, learning, and recording culture” in an accessible manner (Chang et al., 9).

The other two articles talk about craft in India. Over the last century, industrial production has replaced traditional handmade production in India and countries of the like. This has led to a loss of traditional markets for artisans and craftspeople, who struggle to compete against the efficiencies of high-technology manufacturing. However, recently there has been a shift creating demand for handmade and cultural products, creating an emerging market for craftsmen. According to this article, craft is the second largest employer of people living in rural areas after agriculture in India. The crafts sector employs millions of people, whose income and livelihoods depend on selling their craft (89 – 90, Wood). As a result of this emerging market, examples like the Dilli Haat have arisen. Dilli Haat is a market in Delhi in India, also categorized as a fictitious village which displays crafts. The purpose of this village to exist is to “create a cultural ambience familiar to rural craftspeople”, giving individuals the opportunity and ambience required to produce traditional and local goods “to counter an increasingly interconnected world” in order to retain India’s cultural authenticity (Sethi).

Works Cited

Chang, T.-Y., Chen, K.-H., & Hunag, K.-L. (n.d.). Developing Cultural Products to Promote Local Culture: A Marketing Design for the Former Tainan State Magistrate Residence.

Sethi, C.M.K. (2013) “Mapping craft in contemporary india: Dilli Haat and Dastkari Haat samiti’s crafts maps,” The Journal of Modern Craft, 6(1), pp. 49–77. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2752/174967813×13535106841449.

“Sustaining crafts and livelihoods: Handmade in India,” craft + design enquiry [Preprint], (03). Available at: https://doi.org/10.22459/cde.03.2011.07.

In this blog, I am sharing two more interviews that I did. The first is the founder of Huztory, an Instagram page that creates awareness about Pakistan’s history and culture on social media. He started this page in 2019 through Twitter as a result of growing up learning about other regions and wanting to represent his own, given the rich culture and history that Pakistan possesses. His work is very interactive and he gets a lot of responses on his social media about the unheard things he shares about Pakistan. I found his work very appealing as it shows the different ways in which representing one’s identity can be done.

I asked him, “What advice would you give to people who wish to contribute to the reclamation/promotion of Pakistan’s culture/Urdu language through products?”

I found his response to be very powerful and compelling, he said, “Material culture is one of the biggest representatives of culture and history as a whole. Handicrafts and cultural products have a reference to history in an unsaid way. When someone buys pottery from, say, Hala, they learn about it, its history/geography/culture, what its name indicates about it.”

He concluded by saying that Pakistan’s national identity is stronger and more cohesive than Pakistanis think it is and that this identity should be represented in tangible and intangible ways.

Another interview that I recently conducted was with an individual (who would like to stay anonymous) who co-founded a business selling the famous blue pottery of Multan, one of the oldest cities in Pakistan. She faced serious issues with getting consistent quality of the products, despite the artistic and cultural designs of blue pottery being so captivating. She claims that her experience shows that there is a huge demand for Pakistani cultural products such as blue pottery, in Pakistanis and non-Pakistanis alike. However, the issue of poor quality acts a hindrance in allowing individuals to celebrate and promote Pakistani material culture.

On August 12th, I went to “Azadi Mela”, an event showcasing different pop-up stores, some of them focusing on cultural products. This event took place at the Lahore Heritage Club in honor of Pakistan’s upcoming independence day which is on August 14th. At the event, I met and interviewed Tehreem Ahmed, the Chief Executive Officer of Soz and Andaz by Soz. Soz is an Urdu language based stationery brand whereas Andaz by Soz is a sister brand by the same parent company which celebrates Urdu poetry on clothes. 

Ms. Ahmed started this brand knowing that there were people who wanted to see Urdu-themed stationery. Today, Soz attracts customers who are not even interested in Urdu but are attracted to Urdu-themed products, given the contemporary yet traditional touch of Soz’s products.

I asked Ms. Ahmed, “What advice would you give to people who wish to contribute to the reclamation/promotion of Pakistan’s culture/Urdu language through products?” She said to me that more people should contribute to the space of making Pakistani culture and poetry accessible, given that there is a high demand for products as long as the products are of good quality. She mentioned that due to high shipping costs, the percentage of international orders is currently low, as shipping cost exceeds the cost of the products themselves. 

Overall, Ms. Ahmed has received a promising response on her products and strongly believes that there is untapped potential in this market, not only from the perspective of a business opportunity, rather, an opportunity to revive the passion for Pakistan’s culture and language in a meaningful way.

I interviewed Salman Parekh, the Managing Director of Manto, a fashion label.

I asked him what inspired him to start this brand. He shared a story that when he was pursuing higher education in the UK, he liked wearing Pakistani clothes to feel close to home, to connect to culture, and to represent, but not cultural clothes that were “in your face”. What this means is that he wanted to wear cultural clothes but not very cultural, rather something that had a contemporary touch. He mentioned that he did research and development to find a comfortable fabric and wanted to incorporate Urdu poetry.

Once the brand started, a lot of designs came at the request of customers. For instance, families of certain famous Pakistani poets reached out and said that they wanted to see particular verses of Urdu poetry. This, in part, gave Manto the identity of a contemporary fashion label that is embracing Urdu poetry and certain famous Pakistani folk tales in its products.

What really spoke to me about Mr. Parekh’s approach and speaks to my inspiration with my project for this MA is that he said, “I was extremely clear that I want to make culture/poetry cool again!” He further added that he wanted to re-define what is cool, as each culture can create its place in such an industry. Mr. Parekh mentioned that people who are not necessarily fond of poetry also sometimes buy Manto’s products. This shows that when culturally exciting products are in the market, people will automatically buy, given that people wanted to identify as cultural, given that such products spoke to people’s hybrid identity of being modern and cultural at the same time. 

Mr. Parekh mentioned that 20-30% of customers belong to the diaspora community. They are the most passionate and give the most generous feedback. Individuals from the diaspora community have shared stories about how wearing Manto’s clothes and accessories make them feel attached to culture and contribute to their Pakistani identity.