The aim of the project is to investigate the influence of fa- miliarity on reading. Three new fonts were created in order to examine the familiarity of fonts that readers could not have seen before. Each of the new fonts contains lowercase letters with fa- miliar and unfamiliar skeleton variations. The different skeleton variations were tested with distance threshold and time thresh- old methods in order to account for differences in visibility. This investigation helped create final typeface designs where the fa- miliar and unfamiliar skeleton variations have roughly similar and good performance. The typefaces were later applied as the test material in the familiarity investigation. Some typographers have proposed that familiarity means the amount of time that a reader has been exposed to a typeface design, while other typographers have proposed that familiarity is the commonalities in letterforms. These two hypotheses were tested by measuring the reading speed and preference of partici- pants, as they read fonts that had either common or uncommon letterforms, the fonts were then re-measured after an exposure period. The results indicate that exposure has an immediate ef- fect on the speed of reading, but that unfamiliar letter features only have an effect of preference and not on reading speed. By combining the craftsmen’s knowledge of designing with the methods of experimental research, the project takes a new step forward towards a better understanding of how different type- faces can influence the reading process.

What might we discover by drawing the spaces between us? Situated in the field of drawing research, the thesis begins to articulate the term dialogic drawing through the development of the Drawing Encounter. Building on David Bohm and Martin Buber’s work on dialogue and encounter, the Drawing Encounter (using drawing rather than speech) is a new method to elicit tacit elements of one-to-one social interaction. The research is largely situated in the public arena where the author met strangers using collaborative drawing as a means of interaction. The drawings themselves prompted conversations about meeting in this way. Locations for the meetings included several train journeys, an arts therapy centre, an international conference, a drawing exhibition and an art college. Throughout the inquiry drawing was employed to collate, analyse and synthesise the data generated by all the research activities. The thesis presents significant encounters and drawings with participants’ commentaries and references to Bohm’s model of dialogue and Buber’s notion of the between. The drawing strategies that emerged during the inquiry are discussed in methodological terms in the context of naturalistic inquiry. The findings propose that by providing a novel means to facilitate and interrogate one-to-one interaction the Drawing Encounter method can enhance existing personal and professional relationships. Findings from researcher facilitated encounters indicate that the method has potential for applications in educational and professional situations where intra- and inter-personal issues are relevant. The thesis expands our understanding of visual arts processes as methods of creative inquiry by articulating the role of drawing as a research strategy and a materialising practice. It suggests that visual analogy can address pressing questions of human co-existence, by showing how what we do in the spaces between us can help us remain individuals yet still feel connected.

In 1995, the World Summit for Social Development identified social integration as one of the three overriding objectives for social and economic development. This priority arose following a century that ended with the collapse of many states and the sharpening of strife around the world. Social integration was seen as a pathway to reinforcing common identities, supporting cooperation and lessening the likelihood of violence and conflict. For the past 20 years, governmental, academic and third sector organisations – with the United Nations at the forefront – sought to improve social integration. However their methods and interventions have commonly been restricted to policymaking and dialogue practices. Peacebuilding and reconciliation are affected by communication within and amongst different groups. Nonetheless, the potential for communication design to contribute towards social integration remains unexplored. This practice-led communication design research focuses on 18 to 30 year old youth in Lebanon – an extreme case of a politically, religiously, geographically, culturally and linguistically segregated post-conflict generation. The research adopts an innovative, interdisciplinary(1.) and collaborative(2.) approach, to explore the contribution of communication design methods towards social integration interventions. The interdisciplinary and collaborative case study process spans seven stages of practice: Discover, Delve, Define, Develop, Deliver, Determine Impact and Diverge. I developed this process with Darren Raven in 2010, and have been testing and refining it over the past five years through the socially-focused design projects of BA Design for Graphic Communication students and staff at the London College of Communication. This process builds on the Design Council’s Double Diamond design process by incorporating stages from the National Social Marketing Centre’s process. Through these stages, the research developed several innovative communication design methods: Explorations, a cultural probes toolkit exploring young people’s local context; Road Trip, an autoethnographic journey preparing the researcher; Connections, an effective method for recruiting stakeholders; Expressions Corner, a confidential diary room for understanding young people’s experiences, attitudes and behaviours; Imagination Studio, a collaborative workshop series for developing social integration interventions; Imagination Market, an efficient platform for piloting these interventions; and a Social Impact Framework; to evaluate the impact of the interventions and research. These methods enhanced candid input from young people, reduced ethical tensions, and improved their engagement with the research. The methods also involved youth and wider stakeholders in understanding and reframing the problem, invited them to generate and deliver solutions, strengthened their sense of ownership and therefore the sustainability of the research outputs, and finally, built their capabilities throughout the process. The social integration interventions developed and piloted through the case-study research ranged from a citizen journalism platform reducing media bias, to a youth-led internal tourism service encouraging geographic mobility. The evaluation of the 24-hour pilot interventions demonstrated a positive shift in young people’s willingness to integrate. The social impact and social value assessment suggests that effective social integration interventions – such as the ones developed and piloted in the case study research – have higher chances of delivering positive social and economic outcomes for the communities involved. This practice-led research presents a number of contributions, the most significant of which is a methodology, process and set of methods highly transferable across social integration challenges worldwide. The research also provides social integration theory and practice with a clear demonstration of the value and potential of communication design to advance interventions from replication to innovation. To communication design theory and practice, the research makes the case for the value of interdisciplinary and collaborative principles in enhancing rigour and social impact. Finally, to the Lebanese context, the research provides in-depth qualitative insights on social group dynamics, segments, and behaviours, which act as an evidence-base to underpin future local interventions. Beyond this thesis, the knowledge gained from this research will be disseminated to the various relevant communities of practice – including researchers, designers, policy makers, and community development workers – in the form of Creative Commons licensed design guidelines, as well as presentations, capacity building workshops, and academic publications. The dissemination of knowledge hopes to inspire and enable these communities to adopt, adapt and build on communication design methods when addressing social segregation challenges within their varying contexts. Notes in the text: (1.) Drawing on disciplines such as social, political, behavioural, and psychological sciences. (2.) Engaging multiple stakeholders including young people, civil society, institutions, topic experts and policy-makers.

This thesis examines hybrid novels – novels in which graphic devices like photographs, drawings and experimental typography are integrated into the written text. Within hybrid novels, word and image combine to create a text that is neither purely written, nor purely visual. Although not new, hybrid novels are increasingly appearing in commercial publishing, and increasingly recognised as an insufficiently explained phenomenon by both literary critics and academics. Book reviews and essays show that readers and critics accustomed to conventional novels can find hybrid novels perplexing. They ask: What are these images? What are they doing in novels? How does one ‘read’ them? These questions point to the need for new approaches to the analysis and critique of hybrid texts, approaches that account for the interplay between words and images. This thesis proposes that Visual Communication Designers – those versed in both the verbal and the visual – offer useful analytical tools and critique for the study of hybrid texts. So the research asks: How could a designer’s particular knowledge of wordimage interplay explain the function of graphic devices in hybrid novels? A preliminary study of fifteen hybrid novels develops: criteria for identifying hybrid novels; a typology of graphic devices in hybrid novels – photographs, illustrative elements, unconventional typesetting, ephemera and diagrams; and a set of analytical tools to critique the effectiveness of the graphic devices in hybrid novels. Then, a primary study uses the analytical tools to critique the graphic devices in three exemplar hybrid novels: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts and Dave Egger’s You Shall Know Our Velocity. This thesis is practice-led in that an issue identified through my design practice led to the research, and analytical and critical tools derived from practice are applied as research methods. The research also draws upon a theoretical framework from the emergent field of Visual Studies, where scholars call for the interdisciplinary study of hybrid texts in a critically acute and widely accessible way. Finally, this thesis is itself a hybrid text; a combination of graphic devices and writing form parts of the argument.

Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Yvo Desmedt, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Computer Science. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 24, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

This thesis examines hybrid novels – novels in which graphic devices like photographs, drawings and experimental typography are integrated into the written text. Within hybrid novels, word and image combine to create a text that is neither purely written, nor purely visual. Although not new, hybrid novels are increasingly appearing in commercial publishing, and increasingly recognised as an insufficiently explained phenomenon by both literary critics and academics. Book reviews and essays show that readers and critics accustomed to conventional novels can find hybrid novels perplexing. They ask: What are these images? What are they doing in novels? How does one ‘read’ them? These questions point to the need for new approaches to the analysis and critique of hybrid texts, approaches that account for the interplay between words and images. This thesis proposes that Visual Communication Designers – those versed in both the verbal and the visual – offer useful analytical tools and critique for the study of hybrid texts. So the research asks: How could a designer’s particular knowledge of wordimage interplay explain the function of graphic devices in hybrid novels? A preliminary study of fifteen hybrid novels develops: criteria for identifying hybrid novels; a typology of graphic devices in hybrid novels – photographs, illustrative elements, unconventional typesetting, ephemera and diagrams; and a set of analytical tools to critique the effectiveness of the graphic devices in hybrid novels. Then, a primary study uses the analytical tools to critique the graphic devices in three exemplar hybrid novels: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts and Dave Egger’s You Shall Know Our Velocity. This thesis is practice-led in that an issue identified through my design practice led to the research, and analytical and critical tools derived from practice are applied as research methods. The research also draws upon a theoretical framework from the emergent field of Visual Studies, where scholars call for the interdisciplinary study of hybrid texts in a critically acute and widely accessible way. Finally, this thesis is itself a hybrid text; a combination of graphic devices and writing form parts of the argument.

This thesis examines hybrid novels – novels in which graphic devices like photographs, drawings and experimental typography are integrated into the written text. Within hybrid novels, word and image combine to create a text that is neither purely written, nor purely visual. Although not new, hybrid novels are increasingly appearing in commercial publishing, and increasingly recognised as an insufficiently explained phenomenon by both literary critics and academics. Book reviews and essays show that readers and critics accustomed to conventional novels can find hybrid novels perplexing. They ask: What are these images? What are they doing in novels? How does one ‘read’ them? These questions point to the need for new approaches to the analysis and critique of hybrid texts, approaches that account for the interplay between words and images. This thesis proposes that Visual Communication Designers – those versed in both the verbal and the visual – offer useful analytical tools and critique for the study of hybrid texts. So the research asks: How could a designer’s particular knowledge of wordimage interplay explain the function of graphic devices in hybrid novels? A preliminary study of fifteen hybrid novels develops: criteria for identifying hybrid novels; a typology of graphic devices in hybrid novels – photographs, illustrative elements, unconventional typesetting, ephemera and diagrams; and a set of analytical tools to critique the effectiveness of the graphic devices in hybrid novels. Then, a primary study uses the analytical tools to critique the graphic devices in three exemplar hybrid novels: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts and Dave Egger’s You Shall Know Our Velocity. This thesis is practice-led in that an issue identified through my design practice led to the research, and analytical and critical tools derived from practice are applied as research methods. The research also draws upon a theoretical framework from the emergent field of Visual Studies, where scholars call for the interdisciplinary study of hybrid texts in a critically acute and widely accessible way. Finally, this thesis is itself a hybrid text; a combination of graphic devices and writing form parts of the argument.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on November 12, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Liberty University, 2008. / The full-text of this Submission is currently under embargo. It will be available for download on Thu Sep 17 2009. Includes bibliographical references.