The role of visual communication design continues to increase in importance around the world. In Bahrain, organisations are increasingly considering visual communication design as a means of accomplishing organisational goals. The research aims to understand the process by which design managers in organisations in Bahrain manage and evaluate visual communication designs to gain strategic advantage. Even though the management of visual communication design has not yet been recognised as a separate category of design management in Bahrain, its processes and approaches may differ from other management applications. This research opens with a contextual overview of the visual communication design management field, before presenting an understanding of how visual communication design can be utilised as an innovative approach to the strategic structuring organisational thinking. Methods have been developed for investigating how Bahraini client design managers manage visual communication design projects. Observational studies and interviews with client design managers and creative directors have been conducted to obtain an understanding of the visual communication design process, together with evaluation procedures in the Bahraini context. These empirical investigations have led to the development of a conceptual framework that describes the visual communication design management process and the evaluation procedure that is carried out by client design managers in Bahrain. The remainder of this thesis explains the outcomes of each phase of the research. The unique contributions of this study are embodied in a discussion of the findings together with reflections and recommendations for those involved and interested in design management in Bahrain.

Authenticity is what we want from the world around us, from others, and crucially from ourselves and what we make. As it relates to graphic design, I define authenticity as a perceived match between form and purpose. For the designer, its quality is found in the process of simultaneously developing a concept and crafting the design/object.

Accident is a metaphor for life. From an arbitrary point in time, we potentially preview the entirety of existence. There is a Chinese idiom called “ blessing or bane,” which implies that a misfortune may perhaps soon turn into a blessing. Focusing on accident as a design method implies making the best out of a bad situation. An accident reveals invisible circumstances and potentialities in the world, both familiar and unfamiliar. Looking into the unpredictable world, I can begin to release my control, take a breath, and see what might happen if I do not fight the situation. I am able to get out of my own way, and see what the work’s destiny will be. This sets up a context in which there are no faults, no mistakes, and no accidents — everything may contribute to a solution.

Alain De Botton writes in The Architecture of Happiness, that “any object of design will give off an impression of the psychological and moral attitudes it supports.” Interpreting design then is done by understanding the attitudes of the designer, which either will or will not resonate with the viewer. I may consider the formal and conceptual merits of an object of design, but ultimately my attitudes determine whether the object will have resonance with me. These “attitudes” are, anthropologically speaking, values: what a person finds most good, proper, or desirable in life. Values are the key to the creation of objects of design that resonate. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into my values and refine their manifestation in my work. By defining those values, I can examine how my work might resonate with others.

Social connection is an essential human need. Personal connections exist at a variety of depths and within different types of relationships. Small daily choices determine the strength of those connections and their impact on our well-being as individuals and as a community. Modern society and technology have altered the speed and channels of connection, increasing communication but decreasing meaningful connection. It is critical to understand how the methods of communication affect the depth of connections. Through a series of participatory graphic design projects, I analyze the strengths and weaknesses of one-on-one, small group and community connections within an established taxonomy of the levels of connection, to identify the factors that contribute to strong social relationships.

Denna studie undersöker vilka budskap som Beyoncé konstruerar på sin Instagram genom enbart bildkommunikation. Då kända profiler har möjlighet att vara opinionsbildare för sina följare är det intressant att studera vilka budskap utöver deras huvudgenre, som de väljer att konstruera. Detta då det kan påverka människor som följer henne så att även de anammar dessa föreställningar, värderingar och handlingar. Eftersom Beyoncé har ett stort följeslag på sin Instagram och då hon själv publicerar bilderna är hon en representant för det här fenomenet, som är att gå utanför sin huvudgenre och vara en opinionsbildare. I studien använder vi oss av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Vi undersöker Beyoncés Instagram-profil, där vi sedan genom ett strategiskt urval väljer ut sju bilder. Därefter analyseras bilderna utifrån vårt teoretiska ramverk med utgångspunkt i semiotik, genus, rasism, självpresentation och klädernas betydelse. Detta ger en djupgående analys som besvarar studiens syfte och frågeställningar. Resultatet visar på att Beyoncé både direkt och indirekt konstruerar budskap genom enbart sin bildkommunikation. Det är bland annat budskap om politik, feminism och familjesituationer. Hon framställer även sociala roller som kommer till uttryck i bilderna. Dessa sociala roller är till exempel mamma, artist och karriärkvinna. / This study examines what messages Beyoncé construes on her Instagram through merely visual communication. It is interesting to study what messages celebrities convey through their visual communication that is outside their own main genre, considering they have the opportunity to be moulders of public opinion. This is because they have the ability to influence their followers so that they also adopt to these ideas, values and actions. Beyoncé is a representative for this phenomenon because she publishes her own pictures on Instagram and has a big number of followers. In this study, we use a qualitative content analysis. First, we examined Beyoncés Instagramaccount and then chose seven pictures with the help of a strategic selection. Thereafter we analyzed the pictures with the help of our theoretical framework based on the theories of semiotics, gender, rasicm, self-presentation and the meaning of clothes. This makes a contribution to a profound analysis that addresses the issue studied and the aim of the study. The results show that Beyoncé does construe messages, both directly and indirectly through her visual communication. Some of the messages she conveys are about politics, feminism and family situations. She also constructs social roles through her pictures. These are roles such as a mother, an artist and a businesswoman.

This paper investigates the complextity of identity through the example of a micro-narrative. It zooms in on the relationship between a 24-year-old girl from South Africa and her 86-year-old great aunt from Spain. The investigation focuses on hands – tools with which we carry out our day-to-day practices. The hands are used as a metaphor to represent our connection with the material world – the way in which interact with each other and our surroundings. How do we navigate familiar and unfamiliar places? The outcome is visualised through an audio-visual installation.

This written report is part of a design research project which explores crisis as a narrative and how it is communicated within the Swedish public sphere. The project delves into the complexity surrounding Sweden’s national emergency preparedness to war crisis on a holistic level to gain a perspective on the different interplay of power structures. The written report includes a contextual analysis of Sweden’s 2018 brochure If Crisis or War Comes (Om krisen eller kriget kommer) to draw a parallel connection between past and present narratives. The design research process is conducted through artistic and designerly experimentations as a way of exploring and mapping the topic’s complexity. The design research project uses a Swedish emergency shelter room (skyddsrum) as an artistic and overarching metaphor of the cumulated research. The aim of the design research project is to instigate critical thinking and dialogue surrounding the narrative of war crisis from the perspective of change.

In a book, I have gathered 2 years of research on the heart symbol in the context of social media and the responsibility of Facebook Inc. in the propagation of hate speech. In parallel, new far-right parties such as Alternativ för Sverige use the heart symbol as a logo. I question the benefits of a rising discourse of love in nationalist propaganda, often hiding racist and sexist ideologies.This research is accompanied by a music video: six women are reading a spoken-word piece on the sexualisation of the female body and the idealisation of a nation-state. This work is entrenched in my own experiences and those of my friends. I composed the music and recorded our voices, all of us, speaking with different accents, witness of our current history of migrations. / <p>Work reviewed by artist and graphic designer Benedetta Crippa</p>

My thesis exhibition is comprised of approximately eleven large-scale portrait paintings done primarily in oil paint on canvas. This body of work investigates the ways the identity of both artist and subject can coexist in a portrait and evolved from my desire to combine portrait painting with writing as well as to develop methods of using paint to express a merging of myself with the individual depicted in the portrait. My creative research has focused on the traditional form of the portrait as a powerful form of representing an individual and how meaning can be expanded through scale, brushstroke, color, texture, composition and the many variables that portraiture deals with. I expanded on the traditional portrait painting by cataloguing my memories and thoughts along with the thoughts of the subject by painting under, into and over the subject in my own handwriting. My "hand" is visible both in the brushstroke and in the cursive writing, preserving my identity in a "readable" way both literally and through graphology, or handwriting analysis. / by Christina Maya Major. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.