Graphic design is a popular subject in art and design higher education, yet it does
not have a research culture of its own. Other disciplinary perspectives provide an
extended context for graphic design to borrow from but these seldom
acknowledge the investigational craft skills associated with conceiving, planning
and making graphic objects. They often apply a distant different disciplinary
perspective that adds complexity and confusion in language use. For example,
semioticians use of the word “sign” and “image” in critical theory and cultural
studies is similarly ambiguous. Where there might be close graphic synergies with
geography, mathematics and engineering, these are overlooked.
In this section, I explore some of the issues that may contribute to establishing a
foundation for graphic design research. The aim is to differentiate between theory
for graphic design and theory from graphic design by challenging assumptions
that graphic design has no meaningful belief system. Two definitions of graphic
design are exposed as offering not much more than a generic name for an
integrative activity. These have insufficient depth and overlook the core of the
subject.
History
School
The Arts, English and Drama
Department
Arts
Published in
The Routledge Companion to Design Research
Pages
87 - 97 (10)
Citation
HARLAND, R., 2015. Seeking to build graphic design theory from graphic design research. IN: Rodgers, P. and Yee, J. (eds.). The Routledge companion to design research, Abingdon: Routledge, pp.87-97.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2015
Notes
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Routledge companion to design research on 28/10/2014, available online: http://www.routledge.com/9780415706070.