<p>Critique is an essential skill of professional designers to communicate success and failure of a design with others. For graphic design educators, including critique in their pedagogical approaches enables students to improve both their design capability and critique skills. Adaptive Comparative Judgment (ACJ) is an innovative approach of assessment where students and instructors make comparisons between two designs and choose the better of the two. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between instructors’ and students’ critiquing practices. The data was collected through think-aloud protocol methods while both groups critiqued the same design projects. </p> <p>The results indicate that it took students longer to finish the same amount of critiques as those completed by instructors. Students spent more time describing their personal feelings, evaluating each individual design, and looking for the right phrases to precisely express their thoughts on a design. Instructors, with more teaching experience, were able to complete the critique more quickly and justify their critique decisions more succinctly with efficient use of terminology and a reliance on their instincts. </p>

While industry is looking to graphic design education for the next top designers who have the knowledge and skills to be successful in their field (Bridges, King, Brown, & Luedeman, 2013), graphic design instructors often have a limited time to teach students the knowledge and skills they need to become successful designers (Landa, 2010; Kennedy et al., 2012; Liu, & Tourtellott, 2011). Most university-level graphic design courses, the traditional preparation pathway for future designers, focus on improving student’s design ability through hands-on projects that teach students how to use graphic design technology (Motley, 2017). In addition to hands-on graphic design experiences, many classrooms also use peer critique to allow students to critique and give feedback to peers while identifying the positive aspects of a design and suggesting improvements to be made (Motley, 2017). Students tend to improve their design when a classroom implements critique, including self and peer assessment, into the curriculum (Wanner, & Palmer, 2018). However, little is known about the relationship, if any exists, between a student’s ability to design and a student’s ability to critique. Therefore, this study will investigate the correlation between student critique and student design abilities with the intent of improving graphic design educational practices. Understanding this correlation may assist those involved with graphic design education to better prepare students for future employment by assisting instructors in using their limited teaching time most effectively. Specifically, a relationship between graphic design critique and graphic design skill may suggest that the limited time available for teaching should emphasize improving critique skills with the goal of also improving graphic design abilities. If no relationship between critique and design abilities exists, this may suggest that limited time should be spent engaging students in critique and other forms of teaching should be emphasized.

Comparé à l’art contemporain chinois qui ne cesse de caracoler en tête du marché de l’art, le design graphique est un objet artistique, industriel et populaire, modeste dans ses ambitions culturelles. Toutefois ses enjeux présentent un important intérêt scientifique dès lors que toutes les productions spécifiques du design s’adressent davantage au peuple chinois qu’aux étrangers. Soumis à des commanditaires économiques et politiques, le design graphique en tant qu’objet de recherche témoigne non seulement des luttes existant à l’intérieur du champ du design chinois mais également de celles qui se livrent en pleine Chine postmoderne. Dans le cadre théorique des Etudes Culturelles, cette thèse considère que le design graphique recèle une fonction sociale et politique significative en Chine, dont les enjeux excèdent ceux que l’on pense être susceptibles de répondre à une simple fonction de communication commerciale. A partir d’analyse de quelques productions graphiques emblématiques historiques, cette recherche s’interroge sur la réactualisation de l’identité culturelle chinoise, en crise aujourd’hui. Au cours des périodes moderne, maoïste et postmoderne, le design graphique n’a cessé de participer à l’esprit du temps dominant. En tant que dispositif actif, socio-formant l’esprit et relevant de la culture, le design graphique intervient dans les processus de construction identitaire individuelle et collective. Cette recherche, après avoir rendu compte des rapports parfois ambigus ou incertains, exercés par les modèles graphiques hégémoniques et concurrentiels, s’attache à décrypter les actuelles tensions révélatrices de valeurs et visions du monde contradictoires. / Comparing to the Chinese contemporary art which constantly prance at the head of the art market, the graphic design is an artistic object, industrial and popular, and modest in its cultural ambitions. However, its stakes present a scientific interest important because all of the specific design productions direct to the Chinese people than the foreigners. Subject to the economic and political partners, the graphic design, as the object of research, attest the existing conflicts not only inside the field of Chinese design, but also engaged in the full postmodern China. In the theoretical frame of the Cultural Studies, this thesis considers that the graphic design receives a significant social and political function in China, those stakes exceed its simple function of commercial communication which we are likely to think. From analysis of some historic and symbolic graphic productions, this research examines the updating of the Chinese cultural identity, in crisis today. In modern times, Maoist and postmodern periods, the graphic design has continued to participate in the dominant spirit of the times. As an active device, socio-forming the spirit and arising from the culture, the graphic design intervenes in the processes of individual and collective identity construction. After reported the reports sometimes ambiguous or uncertain, which were exercised by the hegemonic and competitive graphic models, this research attempts to decipher the current revealing tensions of the values and visions in the contradictory world.