The craft trade in Portugal faces challenges that compromise its productive and economic sustainability and may result in the disappearance of millenary techniques, traditions, and industrial practices of high symbolic and historical value. The growing incompatibility of these traditional activities with digital technologies, the lack of resources, and a growing age gap are among the main problems identified. This situation made worse by various restrictions pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic points towards the possibility of extinction of this type of manual arts. The goal of this research is to demonstrate how the design process of an e-marketplace platform, throughout its different phases, may contribute to the revitalization of traditional industries. The methodologies adopted in the framework consisted in the study of UX and UI best design practices, including wireframe design, user flows, definition of personas, development of prototypes, and style guides. The results of the conducted usability tests to the prototype allowed a gradual improvement of the solution, culminating in the confirmation of its effectiveness. The study concluded that digital technology, namely a designed e-marketplace solution, could potentially bring buyers and sellers closer together, thus being a tool with high potential for the dissemination and sustainability of the craft industry.

The present research addresses empirical evidence of the predominance of a macroscopic, canonical narrative in design: it argues that design education and research may benefit from a substantial expansion and diversification upon this traditionally prevalent narrative. Furthermore, we posit that this diversification of design may begin by acknowledging and addressing its multiple narratives at a local level, upon which a global web of detailed knowledge may emerge complex, global discourses and paradigms may require articulations of the intrinsically contextual. With this premise in mind, prior research has been held in Porto, Portugal, from 2018 to 2021, through in-person interviews with retired design teachers and professionals, and field work with local crafts and industry; these actions have confirmed the above hypothesis within the context of the case study. We now aim at further reverting these findings into higher education curricula and propose a working dynamic between the intrinsically contextual and a scalability of enquiry and relevance.

In this paper we will maintain that cultural institutions are increasingly facing the inevitability of a profound revision in their traditional parameters of unidirectional communication. Given the increasing availability of tools for audiovisual production as well as the diversity of networked communication contexts, the roles of the user and the audience have come to assume a participatory potential in the content they consume and attend; this will dictate their repositioning in relation to the universe of institutions' work. In order to communicate new messages, media narratives, views or perspectives on the same reality are constantly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed. In this age of ‘ConsumerGenerated Media’, identities and representations are constantly changing. The idea and the concept of a brand now extends far beyond its own limits, taking on important emotional values, and people enjoy being a part of that brand's mythology. The Serralves Foundation, along with its Museum of Contemporary Art, in Porto, Portugal, was the subject of a first study of an empirical nature: a series of audio-visual objects were developed, in order to generate material for analysis and proposition. In this subsequent stage, we aim at the identification of new procedures and practices that may be effectively implemented within the institutional universe. We intend to establish more efficient communication contexts, including the maximizing of a set of relationships between institutions and audiences regarding dimensions that are traditionally outside the institutional radar: identity, narrative and affection. By referring to key examples, we will posit that in order to achieve more success in their missions, cultural institutions should focus on participatory education and communication processes regarding contemporary issues. By doing this, they will strengthen their engagement with their audiences and bring them into the institutions' projects. This project is currently undertaking a wide inventory and taxonomy of the various institutional paradigms in regards to communication practices. We aim at producing a map of vocations and positions within the institutional world in regards to the aforementioned issues that require participatory communication.

This paper presents a research approach toward the motifs of traditional iconography in contemporary discourses of graphic design in Palestine. The investigation is being undertaken within the scope of a doctoral project in design at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto. It focuses on the visual and semantical deconstruction of traditional motifs that are particular to Palestinian Tartreez (hand embroidery) and typically applied in ethnic clothing. The research fully acknowledges the challenges to, and correspondingly the urgency of, conserving such unique heritage assets in light of ongoing circumstances of strife and uncertainty in the region. It also observes the impact of rapidly shifting technological and consumption paradigms as compounding factors actively marginalising localised traditional enterprises, including manual arts and crafts. The paper, accordingly, examines the role of design as an essential but often neglected aspect of heritage preservation, management, and activation. It discusses how the general perception of 'graphic design' in Palestine, which inextricably links the practice to cutting-edge newness, can prospectively disregard its agency towards involving in and contributing to more retrospective exercises of meaning-making-specifically in contexts such as historical iconographies residing within unique semiotic ecosystems. A key area of inquiry for the project, which the paper details, is thus a thorough exploration of the semantic underpinnings present in these traditional motifs and, consequently, mapping emerging affordances of contemporary Palestinian visual culture. The corresponding aim is to articulate prospective methodologies and resources that can be introduced in local academic and occupational pedagogies, which can promote the consultation of cultural inheritance as a more meaningful alternative to arbitrary extra-cultural appropriation in graphic and communication design. The narrative fundamentally aligns with the third thematic track of the conference, "Handle with care/Inclusivity, " as the basic premise of the research is to develop and validate means that enable current and future Palestinian designers to address both emic and etic stereotyping, and critically, prevent the loss of unique heritage assets while carrying forward their visual/material legacies through newer forms of creative expression.