biography

Hello, my name is Jacob Dijkshoorn and I will be graduating this year with a Bachelor of Design, majoring in Communication Design. In these past three years, my design skills have improved markedly through my time at the University of Waikato.

I have always had a creative streak, beginning with designing comic books in primary school and slowly evolving into stop-motion animations, film and photography. Towards the end of my time in high school, I came across design, where I can combine my love of creativity with computers. I followed this passion into university and after three years I am ready to share my creativity with the world.

project description

There is an increasing amount of internationalisation in our world, and we end up communicating with people from multiple cultures on a daily basis. Due to these differences in culture, misunderstandings in communication can happen, which leave both parties hurt or confused.

My project ‘Communicating Culture’ is all about teaching people about the intangible aspects of different cultures. I have created an information visualisation poster series that aims to encourage discussion between different cultures and help them to learn about each other. These posters are based upon 5 of the dimensions from Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory. These dimensions give us quantifiable measurements for analysing different aspects of a culture. These dimensions are - power distance, individualism vs collectivism, masculinity vs femininity, uncertainty avoidance and indulgence vs self-restraint.

Communicating Culture