As part of Saudi Vision 2030 and wider urban renewal initiatives, Historic Jeddah has undergone visible changes to its streets and shopfronts, including the introduction of standardised shop signage in its historic markets. While these interventions are commonly presented as measures to improve urban quality and reduce visual pollution, this thesis examines how shop signs, both before and after standardisation, shape the visual culture, identity, and public image of Al-Balad’s markets.
The study adopts a qualitative, multi-method approach that combines longitudinal visual analysis with in-person interviews conducted in two historic market areas: Al-Alawi Market and Qabil Street Market. Central to the research is a photographic archive spanning from the late 1960s to 2025, assembled from fieldwork, social media, and other sources. Compositional interpretation traces changes in signage content, typographic style, scale, materials, and placement over time, while an adapted geosemiotic framework situates these signs within the social and spatial dynamics of the market environment.
Photo-elicitation interviews with shop owners and market visitors used selected historical and contemporary images to prompt reflection on changes in signage and their perceived effects. The findings indicate that standardisation has introduced greater visual order and a more controlled streetscape, improving overall legibility for visitors. At the same time, it has narrowed typographic variety, reduced opportunities for personal expression, and made individual shops less distinctive and recognisable. Participants frequently associated older signage with craftsmanship, local knowledge, memory, and shop identity, whereas standardised signs were described as uniform, less memorable, and less connected to the area's character. The findings reveal that older signs carried typographic, material, and spatial qualities that contributed to place identity and cultural memory in ways that standardised signage cannot replicate
This thesis argues that shop signage in Al-Balad functions not only as a commercial or regulatory element but also as a culturally embedded component of the historic streetscape. It expands the concept of graphic heritage, which has traditionally focused on print and paper-based artefacts, to include the everyday commercial streetscape. The research demonstrates that shop signs represent a publicly visible and culturally significant form of heritage that has been largely overlooked in both policy and academic scholarship. Through documentation and analysis of changes in signage over time, the study illustrates how heritage-led initiatives to organise and manage historic environments can reshape graphic heritage and visual culture. It challenges the assumption that visual consistency is always beneficial for historic places and reveals that standardisation can quietly erode the local distinctiveness that gives such places their cultural meaning.
Detailed analytical tables for both the compositional interpretation analysis and the geosemiotic analysis are provided in the Supplementary Materials to this thesis. These full tables document the step-by-step visual coding and analytical decisions made for each photograph and sign in each market context.
