This study examines the graphic design industry’s call for ‘a South African design language’ in post-apartheid South Africa and how the non-commercial publication i-jusi is envisaged as a space for graphic designers to innovate a South African design language. The central premise of this research is that graphic design, as a form of cultural production, is discursive. In this respect, graphic design practice is constructed and constrained by professional discourse, which is in turn informed by social structures. However, discourse is also a site of contestation and graphic designers may challenge or negotiate professional discourse in their practice. Thus, as Wolff (1981) argues, the possibility for innovation within graphic design practice may exist at a particular historical moment, although this possibility is itself situated within social structures. In this study, the impact of professional graphic design discourse on the attempt to innovate a South African design language in i-jusi is explored. Utilising qualitative interviews and other texts selected from graphic design commentary (conference presentations and published articles), the motivations of the producers of i-jusi are examined with a view to assessing how their articulation of a South African design language is informed by professional graphic design discourse.

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the academic requirements for the Master of Technology Degree: Graphic Design, Durban Institute of Technology, 2004. / This project has investigated African graphic systems, both writing systems and systems of symbolic graphics. These systems are commonly used in Graphic Design, but those of African origin have been largely ignored in both the applied discipline, and in its History and Theory. The project has attempted to explain this in historical and theoretical terms: its motivation is described in terms of countering the exclusion of African visual culture in the face of historical and ideological factors such as colonialism and globalisation. The project's research aims were to collect as much information as feasible on these systems; and to classify them according to such criteria as their language or cultural group, their location, and the functional nature of the systems. From this body of information a smaller number of representative systems were selected for further description and discussion, in order to highlight the variety of systems existing in Africa, their historical development, and techniques and materials used. These selected systems were then used as inspiration and raw material for a body of applied Graphic Design work, which is intended to provide a visual introduction to the material, and to promote and advocate the revaluation of this cultural material. Information has mainly been gathered by means of library and internet search, in order to establish approximately the extent of the literature in the public sphere. Because of the obscurity of most of this information, it has been gathered from such other disciplines as Linguistics, Anthropology, or History. The project has established the existence of a large number of graphic symbols and systems, and gathered a body of literature and references about them. Many are poorly documented, if at all, and even those for which extensive literature / M