Photography conveys informative data, aesthetic value, and a conceptual message very much like graphic design. In the hands of the photographer, the viewfinder of a camera becomes an editing tool. Editing by point of view, use of color and cropping determines a great deal about the communication made by imagery. In my creative project, I will explore photography as a means to generate form, concept, and content. As a result of this exploration, I expect to find new ways of approaching graphic design problems. My goal is to develop themes that combine aspects of photography and graphic design. Themes could derive from broad issues like social statements, cultural phenomena, or mechanical effects, through the use of the capabilities of the camera, timing, lighting, or framing. Methods of editing photography such as, cropping, retouching, and splitting provide opportunities to experiment with making messages that rely on images alone. Another level of experimentation will be using typography in response to images.

“Robin D.G. Kelley coined the term polyculturalism as an alternative to multiculturalism, ‘since the latter often implies that cultures are fixed, discrete entities that exist side by side—a kind of zoological approach to culture.’ ” Polyculturalism assumes the whole world’s cultures are interactive and fluid instead of independent and static, and individuals’ relationship to cultures are complex and cannot be categorized. Yet an individual constitutes multiple cultures, and individual identity embraces the various forms of culture in all aspects of one’s life. My research examines how polyculturalism affects aspects of communications among people who hold a multiplicity of voices. It uses my personal experiences as the basis for work that expresses the effects of mistranslation and cultural mixing and seeks to communicate them to people of various cultural backgrounds.

Mark-making captures movement and preserves gesture. Marks can reveal the motion behind their creation and convey thoughts through non-verbal, non-literal means.

This intent of this project is to explore the importance of handmade objects in the age of information.

My search for creative inspiration often leads to explorations in natural and built environments. Being physically immersed in an environment offers endless vantage points, as well as points of focus; allowing all senses to function as receptors of surrounding data. Observations stimulate thoughts and ideas, which inspire experiments. Projects are born, sometimes out of the smallest details. In a series of projects I explore the possibilities of using physical environments as primary source of inspiration and input in the creation of tools that function in design contexts.

I'm arguing for an approach to generating graphic form based on slapstick. Slapstick is a genre of physical comedy involving humorous portrayals of clumsiness, mistakes, and nonsense. I investigate it as an approach to form, content, process, and communication. These methods were used to construct an immersive installation loosely based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Graphic design is expected to function. It does this by conditioning users to its particular patterns or by skillfully implementing familiar patterns. A slapstick approach to graphic design is valuable as a critical tool for disrupting conditioned experiences for promoting empathy by relating to people through imperfection and failure.

I take a poetic approach to graphic design practice. It is a subjectivist approach, which recognizes our human right to willful interpretation. Designers navigate form, culture, and history like poets through language. We are subjective, exploratory engines drawing formal inspiration from figural and analogical associations. Subjectivity in graphic design practice is complex, however. Subjectivity privileges the interaction between object and individual. When we designers interpret the literal world with the poet’s omni-directional sensitivity, we intentionally and intuitively create objects that accrete inexhaustible, extra-literal value for their audience.

This research was designed to elicit insights from the implausibly-hushed stakeholders of graduate employability - current undergraduates. (Johnston, 2003; Moreau and Leathwood, 2006; Tymon, 2013). It is argued that previous rare attempts to probe students about employability have utilised methods, frameworks and/ or language that reflect dominant discourses of employability, so encouraging capitulation to existing perspectives; and have focussed mainly on alumni rather than current undergraduates. It is hypothesised that graphic elicitation is an apt data capture practice by reflecting the epistemologies and practice of its thirty-seven final-year graphic design undergraduate respondents at eight art and design institutes across the United Kingdom. My version of graphic elicitation was theatricalised through large sign-writing pens on expansive golden 'safety' blankets, emphasising to respondents both the process and the artefacts of production. The analytical framework was phenomenography, selected for its claim to reveal the range of experiences that respondents have of a target phenomenon (Åkerlind, 2012). This contrasts with other qualitative frameworks that focus on finding commonalities of experience. The multi-step, iterative analysis led to several phenomenographic outcome spaces, elaborating the extent of ways that undergraduates experience and perceive the construct of employability within their education and beyond. The outcomes were incorporated to an interactive interface to address a key criticism of phenomenography - that individuals' conceptions are forsaken by its reductive practice (Säljö, 1997). This element of my practice is proof of concept of an interactive phenomenographic outcome space, in which the categories of the outcome space can be drilled-down to associated underlying conceptions. The thesis describes the reason for, and elaborates, my inquisitive graphic practice with students, and discusses the outcomes. The accompanying praxis document supports the telling, from production of graphic artefact, via photographic recording of the artefacts and iterative analysis, to the phenomenographic outcome spaces and interface. The thesis concludes with an elaboration of what has been revealed, and what might be elaborated by subsequent practice.

The purpose of the study was to investigate students' learning of the function concept and the role of the graphing calculator in a College Algebra course. Differences between students with high symbolic manipulation skills. and students with low symbolic manipulation skills were also examined. On the basis of an algebraic skills test administered by the instructor (high/low) and students' academic majors (math & science, business, and liberal arts), 25 students from one College Algebra class were placed into six categories. To gather data on students' understanding of functions, a pretest and posttest were administered. The Function Test consisted of four identification questions given in each of the representations, three questions asking for the definition, an example, and a nonexample of functions, and 15 questions consisting of three problem situations given in the numerical, graphical, and symbolic representations. To gather data on the role of the graphing calculator, daily classroom observations were conducted. To verify students' responses and classroom observations, formal interviews with students and informal interviews with the instructor were conducted. Students' personal definition progressed towards the formal definition of functions. Yet, students had difficulties with the univalence requirement in three areas: (a) order of domain and range, (b) preference for simple algorithms, and (c) the restriction that functions were one-to-one. Compared to students with low symbolic manipulation skills, students with high symbolic manipulation skills were more flexible working between representations of functions. Half of the interviewed students with low symbolic manipulation skills perceived a single function given in numerical, graphical, and symbolic representations as separate entities. The graphing calculator played a role in all phases of the solution process. During the initial phases, students used calculators to develop a symbolic approach. The prime motivation for using graphing calculators during the solution-execution phase was to avoid careless errors. The most common use of graphing calculators was to check answers during the solution-monitoring phase. However, graphing calculators created difficulties for students who accepted graphs at face value. Interpreting the truncated graph shown by the calculator, students determined that exponential functions possessed a bounded domain because they did not explore the graph. / Graduation date: 2001

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