Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

Graphic design faces the contradictions of commercial intent and social relevance. This study explores the contribution of criticism, in two independent, seminal graphic design magazines, towards shifting the dominant preferences of graphic design from a purely commercial pursuit to a human-centred practice. Emigre magazine (c.1984 - 2005) and Dot Dot Dot magazine (c.2000 - 2010) are recognised for their critical intent and within them are emerging critical issues that suggest a potential niche for graphic design beyond consumerism and commerce. In the discipline of graphic design, designers define what it is to be human (and thus equally the realities of dehumanisation) in very particular ways (Rose, 2001:135; Freire, 1993:43). Graphic design has a history of commercial practice. This commercial history continues to define its identity and reinforce a particular body of knowledge. Graphic design criticism, however, is an inventive voice that has the potential to contribute to change. Both Emigre and Dot Dot Dot were representative of a “constructive marginality” (Bennett, 1993:64), drawing from their own set of references and awareness of graphic design’s potential to inform their identities, instead of looking to established definitions of practice to do so. This analysis explores how they anticipated a modern conception of graphic design that has become part of a recently adopted (2015) and more widely embedded discourse. This discourse involves critical design that interrogates multiculturalism, interdisciplinarity, environmental sustainability, social and political agency, and speculative futures. Graphic design engages social institutions and practices that denote social constructions of difference and inequality, and is never neutral. Any work, any representation of ideology, is at once individual and discursive at the level of social, cultural and political formations. The critical issues evident in Emigre and Dot Dot Dot, with the exception of an absence of speculative futures, anticipate a more humanising perspective in graphic design. They invite critique and the potential for change that is relevant to the surrounding world, as a counter to commercial self-interest.

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Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1982.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1992. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 48).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1986. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 116).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 44).

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Technology: Design in the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology / Design education has been fundamentally changed by computers and new digital technologies. New ideas and new frontiers have emerged. Available literature shows ICT has revolutionalised design education through the online studio and blended learning. In response to the growing needs of ICT in design education, new courses are being designed, while collaborations on design projects are emerging owing to virtual design studios (VDS). Researchers in design, especially in professional architecture and engineering, believe that ICTs enhance the teaching and learning of design. The adoption of ICT at the various stages of problem solving has not yet been reflected in the teaching of graphic design, especially in idea development. In developing economies, in the recent past, more attention has been paid to graphic design pedagogy, as it particularly relates to using ICT in ideation. Using the ‘multi-method’ approach, the research captured both quantitative and qualitative approaches in a pragmatic paradigm. It explored how ICT has affected the teaching and learning of ideation in graphic design in a university in a developing country. This included investigating pedagogical models and paradigms that had informed graphic design education since the incorporation of ICT. It surveyed ICT methods and the players involved in graphic design education, and documented the everyday experiences of students and educators in the lecture rooms to obtain a more holistic impression of teaching and learning. Empirical evidence suggests considerable access to computer and ICT methods by students especially. Various perceptions on the use of ICT by students in ideation activities as far as graphic design education is concerned, and how ICT is informing ideation, were also captured through the data. The study revealed activity systems of ICT integration as something that created contradictions. The contradictions were characterised by activities of collaborations and uses of ICT by students on one hand, and lecturers on the other hand. There were significant revelations of the development of the graphic design processes of using ICT in ideation. Ultimately, they were revelations of complexity of the design process for which there were no precise and fixed formulas that bring together form, function, and context conditions, and which gave credence to the orientation of pragmatism in terms of epistemology to which the study ascribed from the beginning. The study therefore elicits a review of the pedagogy of graphic design, with constructivism becoming relevant in the teaching of ideation in graphic design education.