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Refereed articles
Volume 3, Number 2: 2007
ISSN: 1833-2226
Guest Editor: Laurene Vaughan
Education: It's a Futures Business
Vaughan, L.
ISSN 1833-2226 Guest Editor: Laurene Vaughan Editorial Vaughan, L. Education: It's a Futures Business pp.1-4. Graduate design education contributes to the field of graphic design practice, including graphic design education at all levels, in profound ways. Beyond the content or focus of the study, in the contemporary knowledge economy training and guiding people in the practice of thinking and critique is essential. New technologies, the speed of change and the blurring boundaries between local and global contexts, require us to have a toolset for engagement. What we know is important. Our ability to find, create and communicate that is essential. The graphic designer of 2020, no matter what their age, will find themselves working in ways and contexts that we have only just begun to imagine. Graduate education is one way that we, as individuals and as a field of design practice, can find ways to navigate our way into these new and exciting times.
Genre-Based Pedagogy for Design-Oriented Theses in Postgraduate Design Education
Melles, G.
Papers Melles, G. Genre-Based Pedagogy for Design-Oriented Theses in Postgraduate Design Education pp.5-16. Academic design research currently produces a range of traditional and alternative doctoral outputs integrating writing and project-based components. While other academic fields, including architecture, have achieved sufficient disciplinary consensus that academic writing may be characterised in textbook guides, this is not yet the case in the newer design disciplines. Although there may be humanistic and creative resistance to the conventionalisation of academic design discourse and the perceived loss of academic freedoms this entails much can be gained by writing with an eye to models of good practice. Genre-based approaches to academic writing, including thesis writing, are firmly established in applied linguistics and composition studies. In disciplines with stable research paradigms, such as experimental science, the rhetorical and linguistic conventions for academic genres are well documented and accepted among the relevant discourse communities. This is not yet the case in emerging design scholarship where visual and textual modes of presentation jostle with creative project outcomes. Although postgraduate design education lacks the genre stability of other disciplines a growing corpus of academic documents, including digital theses in the design disciplines now allows some preliminary analysis and conclusions to be drawn about the textual production of knowledge in design. Given the pedagogical value of modelling in teaching writing in the current multicultural environment of Australian higher education, such findings have implications for design education. This paper reviews the genre-based approach and examines research proposals and thesis texts from design as a potential source for teaching at the postgraduate level. The paper suggests that the supervision and writing process for design educators and students can be facilitated by genre-based approaches to analysis and teaching, which is exemplified here.
Design, Designing, Designing Designers, and Redesigning Designing: A Fable on Sustainment
Calvelli, J.
Calvelli, J. Design, Designing, Designing Designers, and Redesigning Designing: A Fable on Sustainment pp.17-25. keywords: design education, design philosophy, sustainable design, redesigning design, stuff. They knew then and there that it wasn't just a question of redesigning designing, but redesigning the money stuff world, which was designing power. So they rolled up their sleeves and got to work. When they got to work, the first thing they figured was that some people have money and thus power and some people don't. Some people have lots of money and thus power and use it, and some people have no money and thus no power and are thus used by those that have the money and the power. That worked for worlds too, worlds with money and thus power using those worlds with no money and thus no power. And worlds which used the ones with no money and thus no power. And inside the creaking and inside the moaning could be heard all the effects of this difference of power.
Learning Continuums: Emerging Paradigms - Reflections on the impact of graduate design education on professional design practice in the 21stC
McArthur, I.
McArthur, I. Learning Continuums: Emerging Paradigms - Reflections on the impact of graduate design education on professional design practice in the 21stC pp.26-38. Postgraduate study is increasingly considered by many to be an important part of the professional designer's education. As a result, universities and design college s in Australia and elsewhere face intense competition in their development of comprehensive and appropriate study offerings to attract local and international students. This is the case especially among institutions that possess established links and partnerships with universities and colleges in Asia. China has become a particularly attractive as a source for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, and primarily for financial reasons, participation in engaging with this market is high across the higher education sector internationally. The global context is important in this paper, which explores the relevance of postgraduate design education to current and emerging industry needs and expectations. This account is written from a perspective influenced profoundly by professional experiences and parallel postgraduate study undertaken by the author through a western university, while living in The People's Republic of China. In addressing the question of relevance of postgraduate study to industry, reflections are offered with the intent of fostering discussion about how design graduates are trained to deal with the inevitable impact of shifts in design practice, globalisation and the emergence of China. The text draws on materials developed during postgraduate study and includes references to a major dissertation and project that examines these considerations
Reflecting on Fashion City: Learning From Collaborative Experimental Design
Akama, Y.Haslem, N.
Akama, Y. and Haslem, N. Reflecting on Fashion City: Learning From Collaborative Experimental Design pp.39-47. keywords: participation, co-authorship, reflective practice, collaborative learning, relational aesthetic Learning through designing is a common pedagogical model in design education. Many design institutions utilise studio-based teaching with design tools and methods facilitating students' learning in a discovery-led way. This paper builds on the above model by examining the learning and discovery that took place that arose from a collaborative student design project named Fashion City. In contrast with most other learning models in undergraduate studio-based teaching, this project did not have a prescribed learning objective. Rather, it took an experimental approach to learn and discover from propositions, interventions, friction and failures. Instead of having a set objective, Fashion City evolved as a response to context, generated through the interactions and actions of a group of designers who all had developed research agendas. In this way Fashion City simply took a position of 'seeing what might happen' when a group of graduate students collaboratively designed a project within a particular context.