Using complex adaptive systems as an epistemology for graphic communication design practice

This Commentary brings together a body of literature and comparative critical research to pro-pose a description of the problem space of graphic communication. The lack of a canonical description of graphic communication’s function and operation requires the development of a model for the graphic system before descriptive experimental studies can be designed or ethically deployed.

The author was a practising designer during the digital revolution in communication design and witnessed disruptive production technologies driving cultural changes. Changes that challenged a mass of graphics doctrines and defined the researcher’s original intent: effectively instructing design students as to why a specific combination of media and symbol was effective for a specified audience. As Scher (1994) would note graphic education ‘theoretics’ but not ‘theoretics as an end in itself.’

The research presented is in the form of peer-reviewed publications over a 15-year period representing a single strand of original research into the epistemology and problematics of the graphic communication system in addressing users.