Generating graphical symbols from Lango abuda dance for documentation and awareness campaign in Uganda.

Abstract

The general purpose of this study was to generate graphical symbols from the Lango abuda dance for documentation and awareness campaign. The dance is for entertainment as well as communicating social issues such as petitions, women emancipation, youth development and relationship building to the audiences. It is generally conserved as performances, audios and videos. However, there is lack of graphical documentation of the dance on the societal issues mentioned above. Because of this shortfall, the researcher decided to use the dance as a source of inspiration to generate graphical symbols that could be used to communicate these societal issues as well as producing documentation for awareness campaign. The objectives of this study catered for three major areas. These are; to analyze the possible ways of generating the graphical symbols from Lango Abuda dance; to produce the final studio based graphical symbols that would communicate societal issues and finally, produce a catalogue as a document for awareness campaign. The practical methods such as directed visual observations, photography, videos, interviews and studio experimentations were used in executing the design tasks. In studio practice, the researcher redrew the abuda photographic images and developed them into the layout graphical structures by combining the images, color and text to give a message. The findings of this study showed that both images and messages from the abuda environment provided rich sources of inspiration that contributed so much during studio experimentation. In addition to that, the handmade sketches provided very good guides for computer design. The sample works of previous designers also aided the practical work. The researcher produced a catalogue showing the final abuda graphical symbols as a document for awareness campaign. In conclusion, the researcher recommends that both governmental and non-governmental bodies need to strengthen and encourage the exploitation of our cultural performing arts for generating graphical symbols for visual communication.