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University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building / My research takes place against the backdrop of the design research debate ongoing since the 1990s. This debate highlighted the potential contributions that design artefacts and practice could make in a scholarly and professional research context. Despite numerous interesting possibilities, the discussions taking place in the design research community largely do not attend to contemporary Visual Communication Design practices and outcomes. In this research, I specifically focus on outcomes taking place at the margins of the Visual Communication field, which, though peripheral, are both admired and engaging, and what this research entitles ‘sticky’. Eleven projects are examined including, for example, one that collected the ephemera serving as the impromptu bookmarks in the books shelved in a university library, yielding the meticulous inventory of three hundred scraps of paper listed by Dewey decimal classification number. Despite their ‘stickiness’, I found that these outcomes are in fact only partially accounted for by key authorities in Visual Communication Design: despite a strong graphic language these projects are not concerned to convey an unmistakable message directed to a particular audience. Instead other discussions taking place in the sociological sub-field of Visual Research, which values the open-ended inquiry of the observable features of everyday subject matter, seemed more relevant. Ultimately however, in view of other expectations – a theoretical framework and sustained textual analysis – these ‘sticky’ projects similarly confound Visual Research. Consequently I realised that these ‘sticky’ projects are ‘homeless’ and, to indicate the partial explanations provided by Visual Communication Design and Visual Research, I tagged them ‘creative, investigative, visual projects’. This research thus sets out to derive a language to attend to such ‘sticky’ but ‘homeless’ creative, investigative, visual projects. I explored diverse literature and additional visual work – on topics such as the origins of the encyclopaedia, the tendency to make lists, psychological explanations for keeping personal collections, scientific visualizations, French Poetry, experimental travel, where to file UFOs in a picture archive, information management, the anatomy of the human heart, documentary photography and post–modern cartography. By bringing this interdisciplinary analysis to bear on the set of ‘sticky’, ‘homeless’, creative, investigative, visual projects, I derived a language of Collecting, Ordering and Positioning. From this tripartite model a design strategy was then extrapolated which I applied to produce an original creative, investigative, visual project, called BikeWork, which involved the participation of sixty-five cyclists and production of a series of three posters. This research concludes by speculating that the value of a creative, investigative, visual approach – vivid and systematic though fragmentary and approximate – is its agency. Accordingly I finally recommend that future ‘sticky’ researchers further explore the distinctive appeal of a vivid and fragmentary approach. THE ‘HOMELESS’, ‘STICKY’ DESIGN IN QUESTION Eleven key projects are discussed. Collecting Lipstick (Greene 2001) Why Are All These Books Orange? (Siegel 2004) The Last Periods of Some Books (magnified 4266%) (Buchanan-Smith 2003 [2002]) The Bicycle, Cross, and Desert (Weed 2005) A Coming Of Age Reading Checklist (McMullen 2004) The Readers Before Us (Waller & Beard 2002) Ordering Periodic Breakfast Table (Weese & Halpern 2001) Endcommercial: Reading the City (Böhm, Pizzaroni & Scheppe 2002) I [heart] [heart] (Daly 2007 [2005]) Positioning Newsmap (Weskamp 2004) NameVoyager (Wattenberg & Wattenberg 2004-2005)

We know very little about the ecology of our designed world. Contrary to all appearances, design is not about making objects. It is rather about structuring the conditions for life. Design is our second nature, naturalising changes in our ways of living. Yet it also conceals dangers and diminishes our sensitivity to respond to them. The security offered by the televisual image � and the solace of design�s promise to remove all environmental risks � are fictions. Ecology of the Image is a critical exploration of idealism in design. Drawing on hermeneutic phenomenology, socio-cultural and design theory, it argues that design is not a value-free practice but structures epistemological attitudes into the world. Ideas are material elements of our environments. This thesis offers an explanation of how idealism circulates within the designed world, fashioning our minds, bodies and environments. The televisual is analysed as a normative phenomenon that inducts us into a way of seeing and understanding the world. Its vision of the affluent good life inspires and gives purpose to desire, and sustains what Manzini has called �product based well being�. The thesis argues that the televisual puts us out of touch with the consequences of its vision; it diminishes our capacity for forethought. This results in the generation of unacknowledged, yet self-endangering environmental feedback. Environmental problems force us to take account of design�s hidden rationales. Only at five minutes to midnight, for example, do we realise that the stock and supply of potable water is endangered. The problem is not so much this late recognition, but that design led us to believe in water�s abundance. This situation demands the development of an ecological understanding of our designed worlds that can inform future actions. The sign, particularly as it has been mobilised in cultural theory, plays a leading role in this design situation and the perceptions it supports. The sign is utilised for its ability to denaturalise appearances � to �read� design�s claims on the world. Finally, the thesis turns to the designer-in-training in the process of acquiring instrumental skills and worldviews. It proposes a research strategy that inscribes environmental consciousness into the design process � situating the designer in the midst of semiotic and material worlds. Through its observational methodology it outlines ways of first understanding, then of intervening and generating changes in our �ideal� world.

Thesis (M.App.Sc.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 164-169). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-109). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1983. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 27).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2007. / Adviser: Timothy Jachna. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1996. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 57).