This PhD began by attempting to locate the Epic of Gilgamesh within a contemporary landscape and using a comparison of Michael Ayrton and Sidney Nolan as a means of creating a body of narrative based drawing. Initial work, however, illustrated rather than illuminated the text. As the research evolved, analysis of the text as a model for thinking and the different approaches to landscape from Ayrton and Nolan, clarified that the metaphorical journey of Gilgamesh required a different drawing practice. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets some four thousand years ago. The fragmented and incomplete tablets have survived by chance. Failure, evident in Gilgamesh’s quest, suggested exploring contingency and failure as agents of creative practice. The opportunity to draw directly from the clay tablets in the collection of the British Museum generated the insight that the apprehension of physical objects and their recording as image through drawing, also works as a process of visual translation. The original clay tablets became a source for making drawings possessing a physical equivalence beyond the normative approaches to translation and narrative. This was the central aspect of the final research, superseding the narrative drive that had been the original starting point. Models of working allusively with narrative and landscape were also provided by unique access to the archives of Sidney Nolan at The Rodd, in Herefordshire, and by analysing in parallel the work of Michael Ayrton. This aspect of the research developed as a way of asserting that in the liminal space of the studio, equivalence can be found with the complex and contingent aspects of quest narrative as exemplified by Gilgamesh. Working large scale, the final works produced for this PhD explore translation and transcription in drawing through the surface accretions of material, gesture, intuition and fold.

This practice-based thesis aims to explore and demonstrate the conflict that exists between traditional, male-oriented attitudes and feminist perceptions of the female nude within the context of life drawing practices. The research interrogates the problematisation of life-drawing practice for female practitioners, proposing that perceived tensions and conflicts can be resolved through practice-based enquiry. In response to this, practice has been devised and tested, that negotiates this opposition, evolving an innovative system of projective geometry for drawing and painting which considers representations of the female nude in a way that is compatible with a specifically female viewpoint. The methodology includes: 1. The development of a portfolio of paintings and drawings of the female nude produced in the life drawing room by a female practitioner. This body of work is integral to the submission. 2. Qualitative questionnaires and discussion groups which inform, support and substantiate findings. 3. A literature review which considers the historical background of life drawing and the role played by female practitioners in academic life-drawing leading to an explanation and practical enquiry of sight-sized drawing that epitomises the habitual rituals of the life drawing class in relation to the researcher’s gendered interests. Conclusions and outcomes: The literature review together with other findings are analysed and synthesized, leading to an overview of four interrelated waves of feminism and feminist theory. The emergence and influence of a Negative Feminist Critique of the Female Nude is shown as related to the subjective female identity and interests of the artist. Through the creation of a feminist strategy, demonstrated to be antagonistic to the traditions of the female nude, have resulted in an alternative canon of the female nude that hinges on the interpretation of artworks and affects, but is distinct from, the experience of practitioners. Interactions with the model are identified as crucial to negotiating existing precepts of the female nude in female-directed life drawing practice. Questioning if linear perspective is intrinsically voyeuristic and analogous to a peep show reveals this position as socially- rather than materially-constructed. The extended drawings articulate multiple viewpoints without fragmentation and prioritise experiential understanding of process over external critiques of content. A series of extended paintings is examined in relation to the artist’s formally based material interests in painting and stitch combined with socially-formed interactions of collaboration and empathy. Resultant art works intervene in the field of existing life-drawing conventions and demonstrate a recognisably female sensibility in their representation of the female nude. These findings will be used to inform future life-drawing practice and pedagogy.

Cartoons have traditionally occupied an important place in French visual culture, and are now a permanent feature in even the most prestigious publications, including Le Monde, where they appear on the front page. Moreover, there is a long tradition of political cartooning which is firmly situated within the historical context of caricature and lampooning, which over the years has contributed to public debates on key issues such as politics, religion and social change. In this thesis, I focus on political cartoons and argue that the political cartoon is still significant as a cultural product and as a powerful journalistic medium at a time when the existence of the print media is threatened by new technological developments. In order to understand how cartoons remain a powerful mode of expression in the twenty-first century, I begin by examining the historical development of cartooning, tracing its origins in grotesque art, physiognomy and caricature. I then explore a number of events in early modern European history such as the Reformation and the French Revolution to show that the medium was used as a means of mass communication, to inform a largely illiterate public, incite protest and instigate rebellion through propaganda. I show how political graphics were used as effective political weapons against the ruling authorities, in the face of tight regulation such as censorship, and underline the French artists' commitment to defend their right of expression. As I demonstrate, this commitment continues to be pursued by contemporary French cartoonists such as Plantu who is dedicated to fighting for freedom of expression and promoting peace issues, under the banner of Le Monde and the United Nations. In analysing a corpus of Plantu's editorial creations, I underline theoretical perspectives for ‘reading' cartoons and illuminate the visual rhetoric used by cartoonists to communicate serious issues. I conclude with an assessment of the significant role that French cartoonists played during the 2006 Cartoons War to further highlight the impact of cartoons as a vehicle for political communication, and as a catalyst for debate in the twenty first century.

This thesis broadly engages with the design process and design education, but focuses particularly on sociocultural and (in)tangible references that are communicated verbally, visually and textually within the design environment. With the aim of defining references and subsequently understanding the contextualized sociocultural environments ethnographically oriented methods and an interdisciplinary theoretical model are developed and applied to two field studies. This research combines design with cultural anthropology, social psychology and social cognition towards gaining a more holistic viewpoint on design processes. Each empirical field study uses the same research approach, methodology, theoretical framework, and subsequent data analyses and display. The methods include observational techniques, questionnaires to query personal information, and informal interviews to track the design process. Videotape recordings are used to track the in-studio activity and still photography is used to capture the visual communications along with the sociocultural context of the participants. The studies are longitudinal, being six and seven weeks in duration, and follow university level industrial design students and their instructors from the onset of their design brief to the completion of their project. The first study takes place in Scotland in the United Kingdom (UK) where the students are working towards the design of an airline meal tray. The second study takes place in Western Canada and involves the design of sports eyewear. This research defines and describes sociocultural factors as these are identified through references. Sociocultural references include the individual-personal and social-cultural inforrnation that is embedded in an individuals' personal make-up, called here sociocultural capital. How, when and why sociocultural capital is used during the creation of an artefact is of primary interest in this work. Design decisions are made regarding artefact form, overall aesthetics, materials, manufacture, user experience and more. These decisions are made through considering the stakeholders in the project (e.g., instructors, clients, users) and references to these are called tangible because they are easily relatable to the design brief and the well-known documented stages of deSigning. The references that are abstract and have distance from the task at hand are called the intangibles. Sociocultural references are both tangible and intangible but relate specifically to the sociocultural capital of the individuals making them. Patterns, themes and categories about the design process, designing, the individual design students and two educational scenarios including the studio culture and design culture are revealed through the references. This research herein discusses and raises three central ideas as follows: • A theoretical model called the deSign process milieu for understanding the holistic designing scenario including inside-local, inside-universal, outside-local and inside-universal environments. This includes a detailed breakdown of how to use the model including a systematic approach, methods and analyses system. • A definition and description of the nature of (in)tangible references including when and why they are used during the design process. • Detailed descriptions of two design environments including the studio culture and design culture. It is argued in this research that references provide important details about the sociocultural context of the design scenario. Furthermore it is also argued that all things discussed in the design process are meaningful and have the potential to steer the development of an artefact. Therefore, there are substantial implications for this research relating to how design students, educators and designers are affected by the sociocultural contexts enveloping them; what types of sociocultural capital designers use; and to a lesser degree, how, when and why they use their sociocultural capital. The insights from this work result in recommendations for design education, practice and design research in general.

This thesis brings forth a perspective on the need for an isolated conceptual design phase in process models of designing. The perspective is made possible by identifying theories to describe designers in practice. The research sets out to describe concept negotiation during early design collaboration in cross-cultural teams of Western designers and Chinese designers. A series of ethnographic studies and in-depth interviews were carried out in a leading design practice in China on collocated and synchronous teams of Chinese designers from Mainland China, and Western designers from Germany, France and America. Themes were interpreted from the observations and interview through inductive analyses using a grounded theory approach and a hermeneutic circle. Silences among Chinese designers were first observed during design meetings, instead of verbal discussion in an argumentative process as anticipated by the social process of negotiation. Socio-linguistic reasons are understood to be influential but rectifiable by both Western and Chinese designers. Instead, a pattern of their differences in concept articulation became evidential and brought about a subsequent hermeneutic turn to also describe concept generation. The description on their cognitive patterns found dichotomies in creative processes between Western and Chinese designers. Specifically it was found that Chinese designers tend to ideate and Western designers tend to conceptualise. To overcome the dichotomies, the company's elaborate design process with an abstract-concrete progression was simplified into a situationist design cycle in which designing happens in a creative space. A literature review on design processes identified the isolated conceptual design phase as a fixated ideal from 1980s design models. Crucially, the conceptual design phase with an abstract-concrete progression is equated with the early design stage when studying designers in collaboration. Conceptualisation and concepts remain very much influential today. The dichotomies in creative processes between Western designers and Chinese designers brought to light an epistemological comparison between the rationalist and the situationist. The dichotomies were at first posed as difficulties but later overcome by the cross-cultural teams by making their practice flexible without specific design process. Instead of commonly studying designers at the conceptual design stage and analysing design concept, this thesis identified the designers' differences in creative processes as factors to be considered when studying designers in collaboration.

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Since childhood, drawing has been a constant method and medium of enquiry for me, a medium that is beyond the term ‘art’, that is an instinctive physical and perceptual response to phenomena. As such, it is a natural development for me to desire to understand this phenomenon, to question the act of drawing as a mode of communication that appears to be so suitable to my understanding. This has led to a period of research into the formal structures of drawing, to ask how abstract marks on a ground can be of use to our understanding. Developed to question the universal relevance of drawing, this study is a practice-led investigation into the formal tectonics of drawing practice. As such it charts a period of research that comprises a re-learning of the building blocks of drawing practice in an effort to better understand how drawing influences how we encounter the world or, how drawing structures visual perception. Part I begins by outlining the historical lineage of which this thesis is a continuance, positioning the research as a non-essentialist, moderate manifestation of the formalist position. Part I proceeds to employ drawing as an analytical tool, to compartmentalise a past drawing into seven distinct components, identified as united within the diversity of the drawing process. The seven components are not original in their connection to drawing, and therefore do not, by their mere presence, comprise an original contribution to knowledge. In fact it is the universal acceptance of the components as the formal scaffold on which most drawings are built, that enables a rigorous interrogation of their properties to be undertaken, further explored and developed so that an understanding of how these components structure the visual perception of the drawer can be reached. Adopting the seven components as seven separate lines of inquiry, Part II establishes the Components of Drawing. Each is subsequently analysed and extended through my practice, theory and pedagogy. Within this process drawing operates as the principal originator, developer and vector of the hypothesis, the core of the investigation being a heuristic analysis of the structure of drawing that mobilises the components of drawing from a subconscious by-product of process, to a conscious understanding of the purposiveness of each mark made. The study concludes with a reflection on the research period in response to the hypothesis outlining the original contribution to knowledge, before positing possible future areas for further research.

Multiculturalism constitutes a mixture of expressions where languages are fundamental, not only as the vehicular form of thought, but also as a powerful tool for social cohesion and relationships within a community. Languages are often the first barrier encountered when communicating or relating to other culture. Whereas, typography can provide valid solutions, not only in terms of text layout but also regarding the specific aspects of multilingualism: the design of glyphs for multilingual text composition. Type design is at the core of how communication takes place in our multicultural society. As multilingual communication becomes more apparent, the need for multi-script fonts including more than a single script is unquestionable. This practice-based research focuses on the designing of a multi script Latin-Arabic typeface for literary reading text purposes based on an understanding of Arabic script in order for the result obtained to be respectful of the tradition of Arabic calligraphy. The approach to Arabic has been carried out taking into account the Spanish Arabic tradition from a study on the Arabic types which were designed and in use in Spain during the Printing Press years. The methodology proposed tries to complete every stage in the work process, from sketching to final font production, with the aim of harmonising both Latin and Arabic scripts in the same font file: Pradell Al-Andalus. Pradell Al-Andalus, although not designed to be a revival of any specific Arabic Spanish typeface, establishes a link with Spanish type History in order to build a bridge between tradition and our contemporary multilingual needs.

Cavalier Perspective has previously been described as merely a pictorial technique of spatial representation within the history of Chinese painting. It is a common belief that this unique visual system is capable of providing an experience of three-dimensional spatial perception in both representational art and actual space, in a manner similar to technique of foreshortening and perspective in post-renaissance western art. However, as Chinese ancient artists have a different understanding of geometry and philosophy, it is difficult to either define the origin and nature of the technique itself or to identify which particular visual phenomena it is intended to communicate, when artists transform three-dimensional space into two-dimensional surface information. The thesis begins by presenting an iconological analysis of the Chinese visual representation of space, in order to develop this visual study into a psychological analysis of the perception of three-dimensional form. To redefine Cavalier Perspective, it is necessary to firstly conduct a historical survey based on available visual evidence of both architecture and landscape representation. In both cases, the represented objects are transformed into flattened forms; and a psychological consequence thus appears involving the loss of a sense of depth in vision, which consequently contributes to the psychology of visual perception. To reassemble, and thus reactivate a similar perception in the representation of space, Chinese ancient artists are also believed to have created specific visual schemes to help reconstitute the perception of depth; thus rendering pictorial space perceptible. Cavalier Perspective is seen as just such a perceptual system. Consequently, the theoretical part of the thesis conducts an iconological study by elaborating a hierarchy of form, technique, and scheme in the history of Chinese spatial representation. After that, a theoretical association is formulated between iconology and visual perception, in which visual techniques are identified as potential cues to indicate depth. The translation between visual technique and depth cue appears so compulsive for both modem scholars and ancient artists that, to a certain extent, the progress of the visual arts could be described as the discovery of techniques for presenting depth through purposive patterns of form. Symbolic images are therefore seen to have their concrete formal basis established upon both pictorial idea and, more importantly, the psychology of visual perception. The thesis aspires to challenge CP by means of this formal analysis. Whether it belongs to a simple technique or a sophisticated visual scheme of ancient Chinese artists; the representational space of geometry; the making of visual perception by means of technical implements; and the bodily experience in actual space, are all shown to be indispensible parts of the present research. A concluding case study of the Chinese landscape garden gives a further demonstration that the pictorial ideas and visual techniques that once contributed to the iconological and psychological understanding of Chinese painting have also delivered an idealised form of spatial perception within the garden - where the sense of depth is firstly eliminated, and then artistically reconstituted. In this way, the nature of cavalier perspective will therefore have been explored on two levels - in the form of both spatial representation and bodily perception in actual space.

My doctoral thesis uses the ‘institutional approach’ to analyse the mechanics of the production and distribution of lianhuanhua (comics) from 1949 to 1966. From this analysis, I extrapolate what made the medium unique and therefore what insights lianhuanhua can offer into Maoist ‘political culture’. Lianhuanhua originated in the Republican era and the unique characteristics of its publishing and distribution had important consequences for the medium’s subsequent development after 1949. During the ‘seventeen years’ lianhuanhua functioned as a propaganda tool, supporting political campaigns and celebrating CCP history. Despite these functions however, the themes inherent in the medium were a lot more varied. Analysis reveals that what was allowed and disallowed was considerably more ad hoc than what we might expect of a strictly controlled totalitarian state. Irregular approaches to production and censorship were also mirrored in the lack of an overall national publishing strategy before 1966. Meanwhile, as the producers of an art form which managed to successfully reconcile the inherent contradictions in CCP art policy, lianhuanhua artists developed a complex give and take relationship with Party-State agencies. Comics were disseminated through highly regulated channels, including bookshops, libraries and factories to ensure ‘revolutionary’ content reached a wider audience and Party-State agencies also sought to advocate ‘appropriate’ reading through ‘reading tutorship’. However, these agencies simultaneously faced challenges in regulating the stocks and location of the highly popular lianhuanhua ‘guerrilla vendors’ and this had profound implications for the kinds of content which persisted in circulating in the early PRC.