Graphic Design is Dead. Long Live Graphic Design

Acta Graphica Journal for Printing Science and Graphic Communications

To encompass the multitude of activities currently attached to graphic design, scholars, practitioners, and other stakeholders have proposed a range of names in recent times. Owing to the expansion of the role and multiple proposed and prevalent nomenclatures in education and industry, some confusion and identity crisis exists. This study investigates and traces the journey of graphic design, how its roles and functions have evolved with time, and the challenge of assigning a universally acceptable nomenclature encompassing all that graphic design stands for now. Data has been collected from both primary and secondary sources to get a sense of the situation. The secondary sources helped understand the breadth of the problem, views of scholars, practitioners, and the education world. Primary sources helped establish the inconsistencies of nomenclature in graphic design education, mirroring the situation of graphic design’s expanded functions in the profession. Primary information has...

Indiscipline is a manifesto for opening graphic design futures beyond capitalism towards social and political articulations. It’s an exercise on learning to see all those relations between vision, envision, design attending to various kinds of indisciplines — speci c movements, modalities and gestures through which communication, interaction — and representation more broadly — is attempted by and with di erent kinds of beings. It does not (yet) o er any new reconceptualizations of graphic design. But I hope the concrete actions can be a starting point for rethinking your own graphic design practices.

2005

Introduction: Traditional graphic design forms could (and even should) be practised by individuals depending on their relative skill, expertise and inclination. Recent development of traditional design as well as new media has expanded to new divisions, unprecedented collaborations and specializations in news intermediate fields. Currently a graphic designer connects various media into one multimedia form. Design and related disciplines as architecture, environmental design, programming production and other technical support staff are moving and changing their meaning.

Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies, 2014

This article shows that graphic design's power lies in the formal dimension of its productions. It is right there where cognitive structures are generated, and therefore semiotic and cultural possibilities. By reviewing some of the theoretical traditions in graphic design education, such as the ones provided by the early twentieth century avant-garde artists, some theories from the psychology of perception, and some from the cognitive science field such as the Conceptual Integration; we will be able to understand that the graphic design production is a communicational one. In this way, identifying both a sensory and a cognitive dimension of them, we may understand graphic design as a particular way of knowledge. Hence, graphic design education rather than focus in craft and technology, may understand by a critical and theoretical support that it is just there, in its production, where its communicational strength is. Also, getting support in other theoretical fields such as linguistics, literature, semiotics, or cognitive science, we could think on a consolidation of a discipline that transcends the visualization for communication, rather than one of communication.

2007

This paper outlines work in progress about the development of a diagrammatic model for graphic design that attempts to bridge the 'intellectual chasm' between practice and research in the subject.

Design and Culture, 2016

Facing increased calls for “practical skills,” the arts and humanities are under immense pressure to demonstrate their value to a public that demands measurable metrics. As a response, graphic design has adopted the language of “research” as a way to engage with tangible benefits. Research, in turn, has emphasized applied learning and the field of engineering has been suggested by some as a possible model for graphic design education. This paper instead proposes architecture as a more aligned disciplinary model for education, practice, and research. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, architecture faced a crisis very similar to the one affecting graphic design today. But rather than relinquish disciplinary control to the positivist scientism of behavioral science, operational research, and design methods as they asserted control over the codes of architectural practice, a number of architects and educators sought architecture’s autonomy, an inward reflection on the methods, techniques, and questions that were restricted to how architecture sees itself. Architecture’s inward turn, or “criticism from within,” was ultimately responsible for its return to cultural significance. Funded in part by a grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Graphisme en France, 2024

Since the end of the twentieth century, graphic design has seen the emergence of a research activity that has developed in a variety of forms and contexts: in the teaching programmes of art schools and universities, in projects initiated by public and private institutions, and in the practice of graphic designers themselves, when combined with theoretical, historical and critical knowledge. Over the last thirty years, research has profoundly changed the landscape of graphic design in France, while at the same time helping to question its identity, its history and its relationship with many fields of humanities research (art history, media studies, semiotics and visual culture studies, etc.). This article looks back at this recent development and at the challenges facing graphic design research in the coming years.

2011 DEFSA Conference Proceedings, 2011

The diverse tautology applied to graphic design means different things depending on the perspective from which it is viewed and has become the topic for much debate in recent times. This is of particular relevance to the tertiary educational arena in South Africa, where universities (including Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) which provides the context for this paper) are faced with the dual spectres of programme re-curriculation and Higher Education Qualifications Framework (HEQF)1 level compliancy in the near future and graphic design programmes will have to reconsider their relevance in a changing/changed educational and business paradigm. Determining what graphic design is and reflecting on its role in society is a critical aspect of this imminent, and important process. This paper will attempt to define the "new model" graphic designer by identifying the qualities, skills, values, content and contexts that best describe the practice and the practitioner; as this should also inform educational best practice, and will present a list of values and characteristics that embody the essence of graphic design for the 21st century. These characteristics can then become the basis for the development or evaluation of a best practice curriculum that is credible, relevant and vital for the future. The author contends that responding to the "definition" will allow teaching and learning to become more relevant as the designer‘s identity is clarified, a broader world view is encouraged and curricula evolve to accommodate the present and future realities of graphic design communication

Blunt: Explicit and Graphic Design Criticism Now, AIGA Design Educators Conference, Norfolk VA, 2013

Briefly stated, a critical practice is one that examines and engages the normative standards of a given discipline. This paper will examine a context for critical positioning in graphic design, one which fulfills design’s communicative obligations while offering an alternative to prevailing conventions. A critical practice may seek to make those defined limits visible by actively rejecting the conventions of how graphic design ought to operate, while simultaneously working within those bounds to profane, judge and critique the languages of convention. Operating from within, a critical practice, engages what Roland Barthes describes as “a mask which points to itself.” In the interests of brevity, this paper will extend that understanding to a specific instance, the practice of art director, curator and publisher, Zak Kyes.

2020

Graphic design studies is proposed as a new way to differentiate practice in graphic design from reflection on that practice. Previous attempts to link design studies and graphic design have fallen short of arguing for graphic design studies, and consequently has not been explicit about how graphic design studies may contribute to better understanding the nature of graphic design practice. This has not been helped by the abstruse nomenclature that confuses graphic design's relationship to and distinction from other visual practices. Victor Margolin called this 'narrative problems.' This paper explores the potential to differentiate graphic design practice from graphic design studies. Building on Margolin's longstanding work and dissatisfaction with perpetuating the term 'design research' in favour of adopting 'design' and 'design studies,' the potential for recognising a new field of graphic design studies is introduced and explored for the benefit of emerging interdisciplinary design research agendas.