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The practice of communication design has developed from a visual-communication service industry into a multi-facetted profession, directly involved with the maintenance and creation of social and cultural capital. The ancestry of communication design has led to its continued perception as a neutral tool for the achievement of communication. This research project aims to investigate the possible contributions of communication design as a practice, if it were to re-align its goals towards supporting and facilitating the community within which it is practiced. This research project is about the communication designer and the communities within which they practice: clients; target markets; companies; managers; neighbourhood groups; groups in a particular place and time; communities of practitioners; and emergent or yet to emerge communities. The project investigates designer agency and the ways for a communication designer to work holistically within communities: being or becoming part of them; working through and with them toward the achievement of communication goals. As much as it is about communicating, it is also about community. It is about designers working as conduits, facilitating and enabling the communities of their practice to find expression. It is about a democratisation of communication design authorship and power. It is about the design process as an educational process - all parts and participants within a design projects' community learning and teaching simultaneously. The research project encompasses a series of component projects, across a range of different media, using a practice-led-research framework and a reflective practitioner methodology as the key investigative tool.