Current discourses within cultural studies are re-iterating the limitations of language to adequately describe the affective domains of corporeality and materiality in the study of cultural artefacts. Within the discourse of graphic design, however, there remains an enduring focus placed upon models of language and communication to understand the meaning of designed materials. Rather than upholding a focus upon language, this thesis undertakes a theoretical investigation to extend the literature available to the discourse of graphic design to better understand how visual materials ‘come to mean’ within the experience of an embodied subject coupled to an affective environment. This thesis proposes an ontology of images that is emergent as a part of what, within the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, is describes as a mind-body-world system through which the ‘meaning’ of visual materials should be grounded. This thesis asks not ‘what’ visual materials mean but rather ‘how’ visual materials come to mean in terms of a complex relationship involving the embodied perceptual experience of the maker and the viewer that is immersed within an affective environment, what the thesis terms the multidimensional depth of the image. A phenomenological theory of art is extended to include a range of materials of popular visual culture to frame a study of how form and style come to mean qua the gestures of an embodied experience as coupled to an environment — a meaning that reciprocally emerges through the embodied experience of the work by the viewer. The environmental processes of which an embodied subject’s movements are coupled are brought into focus through enactive conceptions of mind within the cognitive sciences, describing how mind and meaning are emergent within an autopoietic organism-environment system. This provides a framework in which the affective dimensions of matter can be more fully understood as having a cognitive efficacy. Within this context, Material Engagement Theory (an approach within cognitive archaeology) is utilized to include a more focussed discussion of the affective domains of materials, objects, and artefacts and their role in the emergence of mind and meaning.

The research detailed within this thesis was undertaken in response to: 1) the ageing population; 2) a lack of older adult context (real world) capability data; and 3) the need for inclusive design within commercial design practice in order to minimise exclusion with everyday products. The principal aim of this programme of research was to generate older adult context capability data and translate it into a suitable form that will support the implementation of inclusive design within industry. This aim was achieved through reviewing environmental context of use (Chapter 2), conducting two empirical studies: Study 1 (Chapter 4) investigated the impact of an everyday cold temperature (5°C) on older adults dexterity (fine finger dexterity, power and pinch grip); and Study 2 (Chapter 5) investigated the impact of everyday ambient illumination levels (overcast, in-house and street lighting) and contrast on older adults visual acuity. The capability data gathered from these studies were then translated into a suitable form for designers in order to support the implementation of inclusive design within industry; this was achieved through following a Human Centred Design process which involved multiple iterative and evaluative stages. The findings from this thesis make several contributions to the area of inclusive design: A framework that brings together a number of environmental contextual factors which can impact on product interaction; Knowledge and understanding of how to collect and analyse original context capability data from older adults; Capability data which quantifies the impact of everyday environmental conditions on older adults product interaction capabilities; Knowledge and understanding of how to translate capability data into a suitable form to facilitate inclusive design; An interactive data tool (Context Calculator) that will aid designers in the design and development of inclusive everyday products.

This practice-based thesis investigates the development of animal characters in picturebook illustration through the process of creating a picturebook featuring animal characters. The thesis consists of a visual record of the illustration practice, a written exegesis of that record offering a contextualisation and critical reflection on the practice, and the artefact produced, a picturebook maquette. Key considerations include the role of anthropomorphism and stereotypes in the design of picturebook animal characters; the engagement of my illustration practice with the experience of childhood; the construction of a simple picturebook story; the role of the environment as a characterisation device; the roles of the central characters within the picturebook narrative; the expression of the characters’ feelings and motivations via speech, actions, body language and facial expressions; the composition, pacing and rhythm of the picturebook. The research contributes to the understanding of picturebooks and how they are created by bringing into the foreground the practitioner’s intentions, considerations, and methods. It makes connections between different stages and paths of the character development process and addresses picturebook illustration as authorial practice.

This thesis explores the relationship between skills, creativity and domain. It is situated within an evolving topic of design creativity; an emerging field that interfaces between creativity research, which has often occurred in the field of psychology, and design research often associated with the fields of engineering, art and design. Through five interconnected studies, and the domain of graphic design as the basis for experimentation, the research culminates in testing the relationship between creative output and skills considered important for competent performance in graphic design. How to assess graphic design creativity in a manner credible to both the creativity research and design research community has been a core challenge for this thesis. The method selected - the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) - before this thesis had yet to be used as a reliable measure of graphic design creativity in experimental research. For this reason, three of the studies were directed at establishing the reliability of the CAT. • One undertook the first systematic literature review of the CAT in design research; • a second tested the assumption that a graphic design CAT would show acceptable levels of inter-rater reliability (as researchers had found in other domains of design); • a third focused on optimising the CAT to measure graphic design creativity. Additionally, given the wide range of graphic design competencies available, a conceptual framework was developed to prioritise those most important, and suitable, for experimental study. Two were identified (mental visualisation, and written comprehension) and each was tested for its relationship to graphic design creativity. Where other researchers have suggested or found a relationship, in this study, no significant correlations could be evidenced for either mental visualisation or written comprehension with creative output. Such a finding is likely counter-intuitive to many in art and design, thus, the implications of this study impact upon debates within design creativity research, design education, and graduate skill gaps for the Creative Industries.

Extra-illustration was a fashionable, amateur pastime whereby a published text was embellished and extended by the incorporation of thematically linked illustrations such as prints and watercolours. Although material and literary evidence proves that extra-illustration was immensely popular between the 1790s and the mid nineteenth century, it has received little scholarly attention. This thesis will investigate the practice and products of extra-illustration in relation to the socioeconomic, interpersonal and historical contexts of authorship, reading and commodity consumption. All reading is autonomous and individual, but reading by its very nature rarely leaves tangible traces. Extra-illustration, as this thesis will demonstrate, affords rich evidence of how contemporary readers engaged with books as both texts and material artifacts. The focus will be the customisation of Thomas Pennant's Of London; a historical and topographical survey of London which typifies the antiquarian orientation of the texts that were popular among extra-illustrators. It will begin by recounting the brief occurrences of extra-illustration in the early eighteenth-century and will then chart its reincarnation, from the 1770s, in relation to the emergent cult of engraved portrait head collecting and the popularisation of antiquarianism. Chapter One will develop this context by simultaneously investigating the intellectual concerns and popular perception of antiquarians with reference to the genres of images and texts which were regularly diverted for use in the extra-illustration of Pennant's London. By examining the changing aesthetics and conventions of antiquarianism, I shall posit that extra10 illustration was a congenial method of engaging with the antiquarian city. It arose in tandem with the domestication of masculine leisure and both were fuelled by the circulation of entrepreneurial publications which continued to represent the city to a viewer at a remove. Here I shall also explain the symbolic potential of the literary survey of London and describe its dissemination and merchandising towards the end of the eighteenth century. In Chapter Two I shall then provide a detailed analysis of the sociable production, commercial publication and critical reception of Thomas Pennant's anecdotal survey of London. This will give rise to discussions on the relationship between publishing, gentility and authorship, as well as between authors and their texts. It will also reveal the protean nature of Of London which represented the requirements for urban knowledge and antiquarian research of a diffuse group of participating readers and contributors. After this discussion of Of London in its pristine state, Chapter Three will take John Charles Crowle's lavish reformulation of this text as a paradigm of the extra-illustration of Pennant's London. It will analyse the contents and production of this text-led collection and interpret the semiotic and patriotic functions of its collated illustrations in relation to the reading of the book, the psychology of collecting and the contemporary experience of London in representation and reality. In Chapter Four, I shall consider the extra-illustrator's perception of books as personal artifacts, ripe for customisation and display. As extra-illustration was identified as a leisure pursuit of men in retirement, I shall interpret these cut and paste activities in relation to the economy of social interaction and the prevailing expectations of gender, domesticity and social propriety. Throughout this 11 thesis my interest is in the way people readily modified commodities to suit their individual preferences and stamped them with personal identities. This culture of appropriation, explored in relation to ways of viewing London, suggests how this genteel audience savoured a city of their own devising which could be enjoyed in the safety of the home.

The PhD research asks what insights the dialectogram and its methods of depicting space, place and social networks offers to the development of socially engaged practices in illustration. The term ‘socially engaged’ is somewhat under-defined and indistinct in Illustration contexts. Mario Minichello used the term to describe contemporary political and propagandic illustration (2013). This definition seems very different to its use in fine art or design contexts and does not address the participatory or dialogic principles that define ‘socially engaged’ practice. In general, illustrators are still determining what socially engaged means in/for their discipline (Vormittag, 2014). My original contribution to knowledge is the dialectogram itself, in particular, the participatory methodology used to create these illustrative works. A dialectogram is a neologism made from adding dialect/dialectic to diagram and borrows from practices in anthropology, ethnography, architecture, cartography and sequential art. They are large-scale illustrations of a location in aerial view that map out the narratives, imaginative associations and the ‘tactical consumption’ through which its inhabitants make a place for themselves in the world (Certeau, 1988). A dialectogram documents the process of engagement and discussion through which it is created, by its focus on artefact creation also stimulates it. The dialectogram methodology in place at the beginning of this research resembled the socially engaged practices explored in largely fine art contexts, but has, through the practice-as research process of the PhD, come to incorporate democratised practices in design through Bruno Latour’s notion of the Thing as a socio-material assembly (Thompson, 2012:19, Björgvinsson et al 2012: 104, Latour, 2005a: 24). I varied the degree of collaboration and altered project structures to test the limits, and potential of the dialectogram. Taking inspiration from the ‘Art of Inquiry’ coined by Tim Ingold (2014), the dialectogram now emphasises learning from a context rather than about it, encouraging the participants to guide the process and lead the illustrator as to how they can, or should, frame the drawing. I will argue that the dialectogram is an example of an emergent illustrative practice that I have termed social text illustration. This thesis presents the ‘documentary trace’ of the dialectogram as a messy and tangled line of inquiry, less a route to be followed than an unruly parliament of lines where debate and creative exchange can find its place.

This thesis contributes to understanding contemporary newspaper design and redesigns in quality and popular newspapers with a focus on art directors’ perspective. A triangulated multi-method investigation of newspapers in the United Kingdom and Finland produces several original contributions to knowledge. As little data exists on contemporary newspaper design in these countries, a content analysis of newspapers captures a snapshot of its current state. This reveals design elements that function as genre markers and cross-national differences in their use. Quality papers use a more rule-governed design employing a narrow range of expression, while the populars employ a wider range of expression. Existing literature, largely ignoring popular papers, provides little knowledge about how art directors see their work and how redesigns are conducted. I investigate these issues through qualitative in-depth interviews with art directors. They reveal several differences between the genres. Quality papers implement large scale redesigns with intervals of several years. Popular papers perform small gradual changes, evolving almost constantly. In both genres, art directors rely largely on their professional intuition in making design decisions. They might use metaphorical newspaper personalities, possibly as energysaving devices similar to genre. They see several roles for newspaper design, including journalism and enhancing usability. They acknowledge a connection between design and branding, but no evidence is found that newspaper design has been taken over by branding. Art directors are shown to be the true gatekeepers of redesigns, as executives leading the process usually entrust them with final decisions. I present a naturalistic reconceptualisation of newspaper design, taking steps towards a conceptual framework for the currently pre-paradigmatic field. I propose using the concept of visual energy for summarising the effect of design features, which can be used to describe the relative positions of newspapers and their genres.

Communication design, as a significant tool for sustainable social advocacy, is still under-explored both academically and within creative practices worldwide. In a developing country like Pakistan, the role of social advocacy as an effective tool for social change is ambiguous. This practice-led research aims to redress this imbalance by exploring the development of graphic communication design approaches (GCDs) for social advocacy, in response to a low Pakistani literacy context. The investigation presents a contextually responsive GCD model for design development (Fig3a: 13), as a critical design framework, for synthesising graphic languages in Pakistan. This is presented as an alternative non-traditional communication approach, in response to contextual constraints (socio- cultural, literacy levels and/or available resources) in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The practice asserts contextually driven communication design approaches for sustainability, and it also contests the effectiveness of universal design approaches in culturally diverse contexts. Using a case study approach, a semiotic analysis of three forms of Pakistani graphic media, namely Lollywood billboards, Pakistani truck art and political campaign posters, is undertaken. As a mapping stage, this explores the development of vernacular communication systems and visual codes to advance effective graphic languages in Pakistan, while a simultaneous review of the literature and practice supports the case studies. However, the analysis relies primarily on a pilot study, contextual interviews and collaborative design projects, with Pakistani truck and billboard artists, to identify critical graphic frameworks operative in the Pakistani visual context. This leads ultimately to the final participatory design-led synthesis stage, which co-designs social advocacy interventions in the low- income community of Dhok Chaudrian, Rawalpindi. The interventions address the major issue of open garbage dumps, and the co-design approach highlights the significance of communication design practice evolving as a sustainable social engagement tool in response to a specific issue in a specific context. This thesis is organised in four major sections. Chapter One introduces the research aims, structure and organisation of the thesis. Chapter Two reviews the context and identifies gaps in graphic communication design theory and practice in a social context, before it grounds the research in the Pakistani context. Chapter Three maps the Pakistani visual vernacular through a case study analysis, a pilot study and three collaborative design projects in the cities of Lahore and Rawalpindi. This establishes critical communication design frameworks as a rhetorical design framework (pg. 88) and contextual GCD principles (pg.77) in Pakistan, which are then tested in the proceeding final synthesis stage. Chapter Four entails the design synthesis, which involves testing and evaluating previously developed critical frameworks through co-design sessions in the Dhok Chaudrian community, Rawalpindi. This chapter focuses specifically on community participation as a tool to inform the development of effective graphic languages for design sustainability. Co-design sessions, as an interaction prototype, are evaluated for short-term impacts in terms of engagement, with custom- designed communication tools for a low-literacy target audience. As for resources, this research draws on contextual interviews, collaborative design projects, contextual observations and design evaluations, all of which are supported by published material. The research-led design process is systematically documented as design taxonomy, to be valued as a transferable model of communication design practice. Organisations, artists and designers, with similar research or practical ambitions, can take away the underpinning principles from this research practice and locate them within their own respective practices.

This is a study at the interface of self, craft, and sustainability. It is a small part of a wider personal and social conjecture on the subject of ‘change ’ involving these three domains.This research develops the proposal that the success of a profound social change, which in our time pertains to the change towards sustainable societies, lies in the likeliness of self-transformation in individuals. Here the craft perspective is taken in order to link it to a large body of research in response to environmental and ethical concerns. However, unlike other object-oriented approaches with a similar purpose, the purpose of this research is to seek a greater contribution from craft practice when it is viewed as a transformation of the craftsperson. By referring to this human capacity, it argues, not only is crafting an inducement to self-transformation but also self-transformation can be regarded as a craft. To support this argument, material is drawn from the literature on craft, sustainability, philosophy of the self and social and developmental psychology. The historical and developmental formations of the key areas of the research are explored and psychological factors that motivate desirable ‘changes’ are identified. This exploration is then supported by interviews, personal narratives and the active participation of the researcher in the actual practice of craft. The research suggests that the state of self-actualization, where humanity reaches its fullness, is the destination to which the self needs to transform. It then traces elements involved in such a transformation back to their origin. This includes meanings and values leading to transformation, knowledge leading to meanings, experience leading to knowledge and the embodied connection between the self and the environment leading to experience. At the deepest level, it proposes a particular mode of relationship which is best described as craftsmanship or ‘the craft way of being.’ This process is also traced in the personal experience of the researcher.This thesis concludes with an explanation of the concept of ‘deep craft’. It proposes that the outcome of a deeper understanding of craft, which in effect widens the territory of craft activities, becomes manifest in the world in the form of ‘care taking’, essential for the ‘change’ towards more sustainable societies.

This practice-led research is the result of an interest in graphic design as a specific critical activity. Existing in the context of the 2008 financial and subsequent political crisis, both this thesis and my work are situated in an expaded field of graphic design. This research examines the emergence of the terms critical design and critical practice,and aims to develop methods that use criticism during the design process from a practitioner’s perspective. Central aims of this research are to address a gap in design discourse in relation to this terminology and impact designers operating under the banner of such terms, as well as challenging practitioners to develop a more critical design practice. The central argument of this thesis is that in order to develop a critical practice, a designer must approach design as criticism. Adopting a mixed methods approach to research, this thesis draws on 'action research'(Schön, 1983) and is aligned with the proposition of ‘problem setting’ instead of the established ‘problem solving’ approach to design, using the following methods: 1)workshops at the Royal College of Art, Sandberg Institute, University of Westminster and London College of Communication; 2) selection of projects from professional practice; 3) self-initiated research projects; 4) critical writing, including essays, reviews,interviews and in particular the publication 'Modes of Criticism'. Following the theorisation of the terms critical design and critical practice, historical survey of criticism, politics and ideology in relation to graphic design, and reflection on the workshops and methods detailed above, this thesis proposes a critical method consisting of three dimensions: visual criticality, critical reflexivity and design fiction. It argues that criticism as design method offers a fundamental opportunity to develop a reflected and critical approach to design, and more importantly, society. This method creates opportunities to develop a critical practice; one that shapes a continuous agency and interest in wicked, systemic and infrastructural problems with a constant ability to critically adapt and research their multi-layered nature. That will on the one hand help the designer to become a substantial agent of change and on the other, in particularly difficult circumstances of conflicted personal, private, disciplinary and public interest such as commercial practice, to find opportunities for criticality.