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If you wish to submit a polemic and/or personal observation relevant to visual communication design in Australasia, please email the Journal Editiors. Submissions might include: interviews, manifestos, design and designer reviews, student essays, responses to refereed articles, project briefs, curriculum reviews, conference reports, letters to the editors, book reviews, reviews of teaching resources and examples of work.
[2007]
Stephen Banham
Because There's Always a Space Inbetween
It's a well known fact that oil and water don't mix. This simple premise is of course the basis of printing. One occupies the space the other leaves empty. The reader of a design journal such as this would know what beauty is possible from this most simple of principles. What appears to be a perfect and seamless image is in fact a miniscule, in fact microscopic, division of these two elements. For the hybrid the considerable commitment to undertaking a Masters of PhD in design research is perhaps best viewed as an addition to a practitioner's skill-set rather than as a qualification solely sought after by career academics. Skills of reflection and criticality, particularly when applied directly to design practice, have the potential to not only redefine and expand the notions of what graphic design can be but also go some way to create a greater synthesis between industry and academia. So that when they come ultimately come together, as in the case of the hybrid, these smaller differences can offer a wider perspective through which graphic design may become a much bigger and fuller picture.
Jenny Wilson
Reflections on the Nature of Design Education
Jenny Toynbee Wilson, Adjunct Professor of Visual Communication at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), retired from fulltime academia in
2004 after 27 years. She was a founding staff member of the Bachelor of Design (Visual Communication) degree at UTS and remains a passionate design educator. Her career spanned an era of unprecedented change in Australian higher education, an era that radically transformed the nature of design education. Anticipating these shifts she completed her masters, in teaching and learning, at UNSW in 1995. These papers are a combination of edited excerpts from her thesis and reflections upon the nature of design education in this changing environment. A combination of limited outlets at the time and Jenny's enthusiasm for lots of teaching and curriculum development has meant that this material has never been published. Though some of the issues raised are more familiar to us now than they were at the time, the publication of these papers provides both an important historical snapshot, via Jenny's experiences at UTS, and a timely reminder of the issues that still confront us.
visual:design:scholarship takes great pleasure in publishing these papers and hopes that in doing so the contribution to design education by this remarkable academic may be shared more broadly than it has to date.
Editorial by Mark Roxburgh, 2007
Full Download of Wilson Papers
A COMMITMENT TO CHANGE:
Redefining the Graduate Profile in Design (written 2000).
AN EXPLANATION OF CHANGE:
Identifying Some Critical Developments in Undergraduate Design Education at
the University of Technology, Sydney (Written 2002).
THE LANGUAGES OF A VIRTUAL WORLD:
The Paradox of Learning the Languages of Design.
THE RELUCTANT LEARNER:
The Motivational Factors That Students Bring to Their Experience of Learning to
Design
DESIGN: AN INDETERMINATE ZONE OF PRACTICE
[2006]
Victor Margolin
Designing for a World in Need
To expand the focus of design to embrace social needs means revising one's understanding of the designer's role and potential in the world. This is a precarious enterprise. Those who already live comfortably are easily lulled into complacency by a new Palm Pilot or a restaurant that fuses Chinese and Indian cuisine. And yet to turn the world in a different direction requires a heroic effort. To motivate our participation in this effort, the picture of a world in need must become part of our innermost being. Designers have to enter civil society in full force and aggressively seek partners who share their desire to heal the world. Among the thousands of civil society organizations are many that might welcome their collaboration. To lead the way, I would call on the local, national, and international design organizations to initiate such efforts. Building social capital is an essential strategy.
Alyson Beaton
Reflective Statement
My body of work is about a desire to interpret this capitalist system of living, and to reconcile the struggle between my desire to live the "American Dream" by owning more things, and my efforts to live outside of that dream. As a graphic designer and artist, I have found the artist book to be the best vehicle for my self-expression. This format has lent itself to me to challenge the tradition of the artist book, as well as how these books are used as objects of transference of information and artistic expression. I am in love with the intimacy of the book and the object-ness of the final piece. Every piece that I create has to be an obsessively well crafted object that one would find joy in holding and experiencing even if just for a short time.
contact: journal.editor@agda.com.au
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