Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2010. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xv, 252 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-125).

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 31 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 31).

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In this study I aim to see if writing can enhance visual arts practice. Much UK Quality Assurance Agency and Higher Education visual arts documentation recommends risk, as do many practitioners. I hypothesise that very short, tightly-structured essays will foster risk by combining radical format, content demand and writing’s esteem. I experimented with essays by Foundation visual arts students at Coventry University in 2011. Half the group was assigned a short essay as above, the other half a 1,000-word, conventional essay. Both groups had the same essay topic choices; both were taught in the same way as far as possible; both assignments were individual. Practice-based presentations took place shortly after the essays, and students were advised of potential connections between the tasks. Quantitative data was taken from all essay and presentation grades; qualitative data from essay drafts, questionnaires and interviews with selected 128-word essay students. The grades show the 128-word essay students slightly outperforming the others. Four themes emerged from the qualitative data: provisional meaning, risk, practice parallels and project process. Drafts and questionnaires showed improvisation and keen engagement; interviews (loosely following Bryman’s ‘unstructured’ model) considered content, form, convention, risk and transferability of writing to practice. The main problems students faced when writing the short essays were how to say enough and how to mix tradition with innovation. There was evidence that some students connected the short essay with their practice – but to connect is not necessarily to enhance. The short essays were very diverse, some radically inventive, others less so – yet the study recommends caution when rethinking traditional writing assignments because some students respect traditional writing, and may find the extreme form of the very short essay patronising unless it can promise more. The study’s contribution to knowledge is to promise more by making writing a metaphor for practice and evaluated as such, taking writing beyond mimicking or analysing practice. The study also induced a supporting theory that absolutes and variables need careful balance, extending the bisociative notion of mixing tradition with innovation. The study showed that these short essays could enhance practice by fostering risk, but also that risk is very variable. This questions how such risks are evaluated, and even whether an enforced risk is a risk at all, and not just ingenuity. The thesis has six chapters: Introduction; Literature review; The short story in visual arts practice; The short essay in action; Student responses; Conclusion. Appendices contain three associated papers and all drafts with comments, questionnaires with responses, and full interview transcripts annotated to demonstrate emerging themes and connections to research questions. The study draws on reader-response as a theoretical framework, and is informed by the study of visual arts academic writing, risk-taking in visual arts practice, Koestler’s bisociative understanding of creativity, provisional meaning and the short story.

Critical Design is a specific type of design activity that has emerged from within the field of product design. Based on the supposition that design is an ideological activity, it can either be critical or affirmative of the status quo and categorised as Critical Design or Affirmative Design. The intention of this study is to create Critical Design within the practice of graphic design. Critical Design was defined by identifying its key characteristics and then visualised into a diagram that maps the pathways, processes and consequences which distinguish Critical Design from Affirmative Design. The characteristics were used to generate criteria of Critical Design, which were then used to analyse case studies. The findings from this analysis suggested that both case study projects could be defined as Critical Design and served as a way of testing the appropriateness of the criteria. The practical component of this study used the characteristics of Critical Design to create a range of graphic design artefacts and then analysed them in relation to the criteria of Critical Design. The findings from this analysis determined the practical component as Critical [Graphic] Design and suggested that graphic design can be an appropriate medium for critique of its own role within society.

This study comprises a broad-based consideration of contemporary graphic design. It was undertaken in response to observations and perceptions that graphic design is in a vulnerable position unless it is able to articulate and sys¬tematically clarify its role and ability to address issues of significance in the social, economic and cultural arenas. Although the importance of design for development in South Africa is acknowledged, the study is sited within the parameters of design development with a concomitant focus on the profes¬sional and theoretical dimensions of graphic design. The study has sought to contribute to the debate about the future of graphic design in South Africa by offering some perspectives on the opportunities, directions and choices avail¬able to graphic design in this country. The primary aim of the study has been to explore and demonstrate the nature and value of conceptual frameworks and interpretive strategies in graphic design within the spectrum of the developing theoretical basis of the disci¬pline. It considers graphic design as visual language in order to elucidate the fundamental thinking and guiding principles that enable the production and analysis of design solutions. It examines semiotic approaches and poststruc¬turalist deconstruction and their theoretical application to graphic design. It also looks at graphic design through the lens of visual rhetoric. Systematic analysis necessitating the intense, detailed and multidimensional examination of graphic design outcomes and visual semantics, tends to reflect an evolving but powerful resource and tool, open to flexibility in accommodating a range of objectives, and a diversity of interpretive perspectives and theoretical val¬ues. Analytical consideration reveals design meaning to be multilayered and complex, moving from universal meaning to a variety of other emphases in a network of interrelationships and contexts which include internal organisa¬tion, intertextuality, social interaction, cultural dimensions and the domains of creators, analysts and viewers. The adoption of a broad approach has allowed the nascent graphic design dis¬course to emerge and enabled several of the dominant ideas and impulses, that inform creative production and analytic interpretation, to be probed. The study identifies and elucidates some of the fundamental design dilemmas of identi¬ty, place, role and values in the contemporary world and traces the shifts from modern to postmodern thinking, sensibility and expression; to considerations of post-colonialism and the current confluence and interaction of South Africa/Western world. It reinforces perceptions of transition in design think¬ing and practice, but suggests that these are not comprehensively understood or uniformly accepted within the design arena. A number of multifaceted, interlinked and overlapping tributaries or features can be assigned to contem¬porary graphic design, allowing it to be viewed in terms of communication, context, transformation, convergence, pluralism, complexity and digital tech¬nology. These salient characteristics provided a useful means to position graphic design within the context of the challenges facing corporate organisations in South Africa. The study suggests a more inclusive, knowledge-based form of graphic design practice which presupposes an holistic understanding and use of design within the functional and cultural parameters of the corporate envi¬ronment; and as a response to the impact of both information technology and contemporary management processes. It proposes that an encompassing vision of graphic design, which accommodates broader theoretical and practi¬cal dimensions, must be encouraged in South Africa. / Thesis (DPhil (Fine Arts))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Visual Arts / unrestricted

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