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A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Master’s Degree in Technology: Graphic Design, Durban University of Technology, 2013. / In this critically reflective self-study I have illustrated how my research in the field of Graphic design has been purposeful in creating a visual voice to express myself, improve my practice as an artist, teacher, and visual activist and in turn create an alternate voice for others. My study includes the conceptualization of the pictographic cards that I have named PicTopics, their value as an educational tool and their pertinence as visual prompts. My research questions have included exploring the role of the PicTopics in communicating a story or message, and how they could be pertinent to my practice as an artist, researcher, teacher and social being. My methodology, under the umbrella of self-study, has explored the living social, educational, and artistic values associated with fun, playing, creativity and wellbeing as a way to improve my practice. I used the PicTopic in a variety of settings - with the public at an art gallery to record their stories, in the classroom as creative prompts and as a way to inspire and conceptualize the practical artistic component of this study. I believe that the PicTopics when used as prompts can trigger and cultivate storytelling, enable engagement between people and open communication channels between the educator, and students. The PicTopics have become a thread between my living theories which are linked with my values and beliefs, my practice as an artist and my role as an educator and social transformer.

The industrial safety posters produced by Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) during WW2 are evidence of a politically progressive, socially engaged and mass-produced graphic communication in Britain. These characteristics allow the RoSPA posters to qualify, by Walter Benjamin’s criteria, as exemplars of Modernist cultural production in the age of mechanical reproduction. The emergence of these images, within the unlikely context of war, is evidence of the social change identified by George Orwell as a necessary condition of victory. Furthermore, the presence of this material, within an English context, counters the prevailing orthodoxy of an English resistance to Modernism. The thesis describes the administrative and technical determinants of the posters, as indicated by the structure of RoSPA, the personalities behind the campaign and the technical expertise of the printers; Loxley Brothers of Sheffield. Quaker and Nonconformist antecedents are revealed to define the values of both administration and printers. The thesis explores the RoSPA posters’ use of Surrealist techniques and iconography and also their appeal to a wider and international Left community. The address of the RoSPA posters to the neophyte industrial worker offers the opportunity, exemplified by the special case of women workers, to project an “imagined community” beyond the normal tribal and class distinctions of British society through “Social Vision.” The RoSPA posters make explicit a connection, within English Modernism, between community, technology, progress and dissent. A catalogue of posters is appended to the thesis. The RoSPA posters reaffirm the progressive, emancipatory and radical quality of the popular experience of the Home-Front in Britain during WW2. The social changes, precipitated by the circumstances of war, of which the RoSPA posters are a manifestation, alter the role of graphic designer in relationship to community through an embrace of technology. The concept of graphic authorship is, in consequence, irrevocably changed.

Visual communication (VC) resources can be seen as playing an increasingly important role in delivery and learning systems in today s design and technology education. The performance of current tools and resources is the primary concern of this research, and particularly whether they take full advantage of VC when delivering technological information to industrial design (ID) and engineering design (ED) students. This thesis sought key principles behind the visual communication of technology (VCT) and its association to designing, creativity and innovation through a literature survey. The findings concluded that there were many such assertions made with little evidence concerning the associations suggested. Some guiding sources and key emerging principles (KEPs) for good VCT practices were established. A miniature-kite-designing exercise was conducted as a case study for the purpose of examining the links between VCT, designing and creativity and/or innovation. Kite-technological-information posters were used as the VCT tool for the kite-designing case. A comparative study of kite-designing was conducted in Malaysia to check the reliability of the study, and another validation study was carried out for the purpose of establishing the validity of the data gathering. Visual technological information (VTI) for kite design (or a kite-poster) was refined accordingly to the KEPs established from the literature review, and its visual impact was tested through the use of eye-tracking technology. Some selected current and historical visual tools, which have been used in design and technology communication and were recognised as having positive impacts were analysed and articulated in order to reveal a deeper understanding of the KEPs. These were further validated through eye-tracking of reading patterns of participants on those selected visuals. The perceptual responses toward those visuals were also recorded and analysed. A theoretical research framework was established to investigate VTI representation used in books by Ashby (1999) and Ashby and Johnson (2002), in new authors scholarly papers (METU, 2010), and of the author s analysis and redesign of some of those studied VTIs based on the KEPs emerging from the research. A questionnaire survey was conducted within a number of higher education institutions in 3 regions around the world in order to achieve reliable data gathering. This third case study was validated through experts discussion of the findings and related issues. Within these three case studies, a mixture of scientific (using the eye-tracker device) and conventional methods (questionnaires, interviews, discussion group and comparative studies), and also others methods such as design workshops, analysing existing resources, using own practice of design-and-redesign activities were conducted to provide quantitative and qualitative measurements to empirically validate the literature search. Evidence of links between VCT, designerly activities which involved knowledge, skills and values within the technological communication, and of facilitating creativity was obtained. Empirical evidence showed that VTIs were effective in communicating knowledge, skills and values; where the KEPs criteria had played essential roles in enriching the visual emphasis of VTIs. The redesigning exercise using the author s own practice, which articulated the KEPs through the redesign of the existing VTIs for the purpose of more effective VCT, again obtained significant evidence of visual effectiveness and easy understanding capability. Evidence from the analysis of 2 books on materials technology for ID and ED students, views from the 2 materials experts, and the literature review suggested that ID and ED students require difference types of representational models and graphical strategies of VCT in their learning. However, the empirical data from the research, which was supported by one of the materials experts, suggested that ID and ED students even with different cultural backgrounds did not require different VTIs or the use of different VCT strategies for effective communication.

In pursuing my aim to provide a methodical easy to follow ideation to creationprocess didactic instructional tool to be used both for design and art projects, ledme to produce a multimedia film.An A2 poster with 3 5 step tried and tested hybrid methods started action research,acting as a didactic teaching tool and point of reference.Further to an interview with gymnasium (high school) art and storytelling teacher,the defining process began by editing live test case documentation from her finalyear 2013 art and design class. Audio clips from a creative director and teacherinterviews’ along with still picture quotes added valuable process method narration.Practical hands on experience in addition to the gymnasium class usability findings,led to final stage development in the form of a digital mobile application, "id'8." Anend sequence animation illustrates simplified, refined and combined 2 5stepprocesses in action, as I work the id’8 process tool interactively.

The impulse to resolve and interpret messages drives creativity and understanding. As graphic designers, we may try to communicate familiar ideas in an unfamiliar way - unfamiliar, but unique, memorable, and engaging. By utilizing the theory and practice of psychology and the cognitive processes involved in assigning influence, importance, recognition and associations with signifiers in the mind, we can strengthen visual communication. Theoretical and applied psychological techniques and models will provide the basis for an exploration and development of new methodologies and tools that will enhance the creative process for graphic designers.

This document explores the use of motion within design to defamiliarize a message. The objective is to expand a viewer’s level of understanding through prolonged perception. I experiment with this idea using present-day tools which afford my own movement during the capturing process to create various visual interpretations of motion. I look to László Moholy-Nagy, Aleksandr Rodchenko and Eadweard Muybridge who explored the use of the camera, the new technology of their day, to understand its potential to create a new visual language. They believed the lens of the camera was the eye of the future—and the public’s exposure to the camera’s possibilities an enlightening transcendence. I also believe in exploring newly developed tools; in visually researching their intended and unintended use to discover new perspectives in not only the way we see and represent the world, but the way we understand and represent ourselves in relation to the study of our field.