Decorative Ornaments of Rumah Gadang As The Basic Idea for Designing Ethnic Typography

Abstract

Indonesia has cultural diversity spread throughout the archipelago in the form of physical and non-physical cultures. Physical culture can be seen and maintained in its shape, composition and supporting decorative elements. Whereas non-physical culture is present through social norms and values. Traditional house represents as one physical culture sample and also the diversity of tribes in Indonesia, each has its own traditional house character along with its decorative elements, such as decoration. Decorative elements in Indonesia has various forms and meanings. The motifs that generally found are in the form of plants, animals and some geometric ornaments that have certain meanings. In the Rumah Gadang decoration, there are many different variations of decorative forms generally in the form of tendrils as a decorative element of the traditional house. The various forms of the Rumah Gadang decoration are then used as design ideas to create ethnic. Ethnic typography design which based on decorative elements transformation from the Rumah Gadang house can be used as the source for designers, typographers, and users in terms of introducing the distinctive character of West Sumatra and also can be used on customized design media.