An examination and redesign of the Munzur culture and nature festival posters from a semiotic perspective

Culture, as the common heritage of humanity, possesses a unifying and integrative structure. Extending from a sense of belonging to the elements that constitute a society's identity, this structure ensures continuity by establishing a balance between old and new traditions. Culture should be considered not only as a legacy passed down from the past, but also as a dynamic process that is reshaped and updated in accordance with changing social conditions. Interactions with other societies play a significant role in shaping culture, enabling the recognition, sharing, and gradual internalization of different traditions and cultural elements. Posters are one of the most effective visual communication tools for conveying the identity and messages of a festival. They not only promote an event but also communicate the festival's ideological and cultural narrative to a wide audience through a visual language. This form of communication, which uses both visual and linguistic elements, prompts the viewer to think, interpret, and make sense of it. In this respect, posters offer a suitable area for semiotic analysis. The field of art, as a structure interwoven with signs, makes it possible to transmit social and cultural meanings through posters, paintings, texts, and visuals. Signs allow for the analysis of the layers of meaning carried by posters, revealing how the design constructs the intended message. This study aims to examine the posters of the Munzur Culture and Nature Festival using a semiotic method and to develop alternative poster designs appropriate to the festival's identity based on the findings. In this context, past festival posters were analyzed based on the semiotic approaches of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce. The sign systems, symbols, colors, typography, and compositional elements in the posters were analyzed; implicit meanings were evaluated in line with Roland Barthes' concepts of myths and second-order semiotics. Furthermore, the semantic structures of the posters were examined based on Saussure's signifier-signified relationship. Based on the analysis findings, new poster designs for the Munzur Festival were developed within the scope of this thesis. The design process focused on synthesizing modern graphic design principles with local and cultural elements; a minimalist design approach was adopted to express the festival's connection with nature, culture, and collective memory through a powerful visual narrative language. The redesigned posters were compared with existing posters and evaluated in terms of meaning production and visual impact. In conclusion, this thesis reveals that the posters of the Munzur Culture and Nature Festival are not merely design products, but also a cultural and political narrative tool. The study proposes alternative poster designs with high visual communication power that reflect the festival's identity more strongly and effectively.