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Framing Futures for Visual Communication Design Research

This text was awarded best paper in the 2011 Design Principles and Practices (DPP) conference in Rome and published in the DPP Journal. The research posits opportunities for a critical approach to visual communication design in research, investigated in light of the ongoing shift towards the reconsideration of visual communication design as a more holistic, trans-disciplinary activity. Acknowledging the conventional roles of visual communication design (branding, advertising, information design, and so on), this research proposes that visual communication design typologies can also be used to play a fundamental role in the framing of research enquiry and the forming of research agendas. The proposal advocates the embedding of visual communication design at the formative stage of a research project where design strategies can be employed in finding and defining issues of concern. Examples of post-consumption and social practice contexts for the application of visual communication and information design, where design methodologies might be used to explore critical and ethical dimensions, are of particular interest.

Related work includes: the book chapter ‘Possible worlds: the yield of visual communication design in trans-disciplinary research’ (Williams, Gwilt 2012), published in Visual Communication Design in Transdisciplinary Research, 3rd International Design Conference – Research in Graphic Design, Graphic Design in Research, Academy of Fine Arts, Katowice, Poland (2012); research into the use of stop-frame animation techniques with children in care and dementia communities, as a way of capturing and recording personal stories (‘ArtHouse’ project); a theoretical framework for the Design & Rehabilitation workshops that took place in 2011 between the RSA/Sheffield Hallam University and Sheffield Princess Royal Spinal Injuries Centre. These workshops explored the use of design thinking strategies to help re-empower spinal injury patients and were reported in ‘Thinking Through Design and Rehabilitation’, (Craig, Gwilt et al.) presented at 12th European AAATE Conference, September 2013, Portugal.