Reflections of cross-cultural communication and using illustrations on posters

The societies create own cultures with their products. The material and spiritual values, different climate, different soil structures, many different beliefs and similar factors acquire identity to many societies. Identities make contact with each other at the point where social needs are come into question. Diversities of identities we name as 'culture' are transformed into similarities through different manners of expressions during the process of communication since each culture, in its own right, has some mutual matters having cultural merits. Food, clothing, money making and so on are among the mutual points within cross-cultural communication. These social matters have maintained their continuities as a visual communication language by being illustrated by designers for centuries, and still continue today. The objective is to communicate an existing message to a target audience as earliest as possible. Writing, in this context, falls behind the visual since it has different characteristics depending on societies. "The sense of sight precedes all the words", as Rollo May stated. In this regard, illustrating is the visual communication language that enables cross-cultural communication within cultural diversities. In the first section of this thesis consisting of four sections in total, it has been put emphasis on the problem, objective and method of the thesis. Secondly, the definitions of the terms of culture, communication and illustration, their historical development processes, their functionalities, interrelations with each other, and their use on poster, one of the means of communication, have been discussed. Later, it has been given a general information on the poster competition named 'Poster For Tomorrow', and featured the jury members and the organization running the competition in the third section. The posters with illustrations among the 100 posters selected by the jury in "A Home For Everyone", a poster competition run by the organization in 2012, have been examined. And, in the conclusion as a final section, the thesis study has been summed up through a general view, and it has been discussed the cases that exist and result from through the study. Key Words: Culture, Cross-cultural, Communication, Illustration, Poster.