Vernacular design in the Honghai Morning Market: a visual inquiry into modes of communication

This article focuses on the use of vernacular design in one of China's many street markets. In such markets, one can find diverse informal stalls and handcrafted signs, all created for the purpose of communicating with customers. Taking on visual ethnographic research methods, this article explores how vendors at the Honghai Morning Market in a northern Chinese city utilize the resources around them to present their goods and convey information about them, focusing on both the design outcome and the dynamic design process.. Following a process of axial coding of research data drawn from field observations and photographic records collected in both winter and summer months between February 2023 and April 2024, three main modes of visual communication through vernacular design have been identified: display, lettering, and performance. Bringing in the notion of tinkering as well as material engagement theory, these modes of communication are further scrutinized to understand the logic of production underlying their respective communication practices. While presenting detailed accounts of the three identified modes of communication through vernacular design, the article also argues that the shaping of visual communication is not a unilateral result of human behavior but rather a dynamic process of interaction between human beings and the material environment. Objects in the market (e.g., wood, cardboard, metal rods, etc.) are not static objects with a particular materiality. Their unique materiality makes them actors in the communication process.