12.01.2012
10.30 – 11.00

Jorge Frascara is Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, Fellow of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, and Past President of Icograda. Has published nine books, including Communication Design and Designing Effective Communications, and more than 50 articles. He has lectured in 26 countries, has been an advisor for the Canadian Standards Council, the ISO, and several journals and universities, and an officer of several design organizations. He now lives and works in Padova, Italy.

Research, design, and the kind of design we need
The kind of design we need must respond to two conditions: it has to be relevant for society and it has to be user centred, evidence based and results oriented. The culture of research is gaining momentum in the design environment, and there are many ways of interpreting its role. I will focus my presentation on research grounded on the practice of design and directed to the practice of design. I will discuss in detail the research methods I use. Case studies will allow me to offer insights into how research can lead to the development of a user centred, evidence based and results oriented approach to designing. I see this as the best way to make the practice of design become accountable to society, to clients and to the profession.

12.01.2012
15.00 – 15.30

Jan Kubasiewicz Jan Kubasiewicz is Professor of Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston and Head of Dynamic Media Institute—the graduate program in communication design wherein students from diverse backgrounds pursue a unique thesis, through a rigorous practice of research, prototyping, and writing [dynamicmediainstitute.org]. He has served as visiting lecturer and critic at numerous universities in the USA, Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Italy and Poland. He has organized exhibitions, workshops, seminars and conferences on the topic of communication, design and media.

Rigorous Practice of Research
This 3-day workshop will focus on methodology and pedagogy of thesis development as practiced at the Dynamic Media Institute—the master's program in communication design at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. Massart MFA thesis in design is  a proposition advancing a new point of view, that is maintained by argument resulting from a rigorous practice of research, prototyping, and writing. Based on the same principles, but in a microscale, this workshop will provide an introduction to a broad range of relevant subjects.

Workshop participants will learn:
— to recognize multiple goals of research.
— to formulate a proper researchable question.
— to consider "prototype culture" as an approach to design.
— to understand "reflective practice" and the role of writing in design process.
— to document and to present a case study.

The workshop will include brief lectures, demonstrations, studio projects, and ongoing class critiques and discussions. Details of the projects will be given on the first day of the workshop. The workshop is open to students, professionals and educators in the field of communication design, graphic design or dynamic media design. Those interested in the workshop are encouraged to explore student work developed at the Dynamic Media Institute, especially its 2010 publication The Experience of Dynamic Media available as PDF for free download at the institute's website dynamicmediainstitute.org.

Design Research Is Design Practice: Mapping Design Intelligence.
Research is systematic inquiry, the goal of which is knowledge (L. Bruce Archer, 1981). Also, design is a way of inquiring and knowing. Designers research when they design—that is  the core concept of this paper. I will explore multiple aspects and strategies of inquiry in \ the context of communication design, making a strong argument for rigorous experimentation as a creative practice of research. I will focus on various concepts associated with design and research: 1. Design epistemology—"how" designers know and what is the nature of their "knowing"; Design praxis—designers' "practices" and "processes"; Design phenomenology—examination of cultural artifacts designers produce—not only objects, but human experiences mediated, or perhaps the better term would be "curated," within the computational complexity of social communication. I will examine what ‶design knowledge” is—specifically, what "existing knowledge" designers investigate and explore in order to produce "new knowledge." I will also discuss multiple goals of design research—research for design (research to solve specific design objectives), and research about design (research into what design should be).

13.01.2012
10.00 – 10.30

Gerard Unger. Born at Arnhem, Netherlands, 1942. Studied graphic design, typography and type design from 1963–’67 at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, where he has also taught for many years. He presently teaches as visiting Professor at The University of Reading, UK, Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, and as Professor of Typography at Leiden University, the Netherlands. (All teaching has always been part time.) Free lance designer from 1972. He has designed stamps, coins, magazines, newspapers, books, logo’s, corporate identities, annual reports and many other objects, and typefaces (see: www.gerardunger.com). He has been awarded several Dutch and international prizes and honours, such as two honorary doctorates by the universities of Hasselt, Belgium and Tallinn, Estonia. He has written articles for the trade press, and several larger publications, such as Landscape with Letters (1989), linking the usually limited scope of type and typography with a wider cultural view. His book Terwijl je leest — about reading —has been translated in Italian, English, Spanish and German. He lectures frequently in Holland and abroad, about his own work, type design, the reading process, and related subjects.

All my type designs: Markeur (1972), M.O.L. (1974), Demos (1976), Praxis (1977), Hollander (1983), Flora (1984), Swift (1985), Amerigo (1986), Oranda (1987), Argo (1991), Delftse Poort (1991), Decoder (1992), Gulliver (1993), ANWB fonts (1997,) Capitolium (1998), Paradox (1999), Coranto (2000), Vesta (2001), BigVesta (2003), Allianz (2005), Capitolium News (2006).

12.01.2012
12.10 – 12.40

Lucienne Roberts studied graphic design at the Central School of Art and Design. After a brief period at The Women’s Press, Roberts established the design studio sans+baum, hoping to ally a commitment to accessible and engaging design with a socially aware agenda. Roberts’ new studio LucienneRoberts+ started at the end of 2006. Projects have been wide-ranging and include exhibition design for the British Museum and Wellcome Trust; and identities for the Royal Academy, Petrie Museum and the David Miliband Labour Party leadership campaign. In 2000 Roberts was a signatory of the manifesto First Things First, which calls for a greater awareness of design responsibility. She has lectured widely, most recently at Yale and ESAD, Porto. sans+baum projects were included in the Barbican exhibition Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. Roberts is a regular contributor to Eye magazine and Grafik. Her first book, The Designer and the Grid was published by RotoVision in 2002. Good: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design, was published in 2007 by AVA. Roberts was design consultant to Breakthrough Breast Cancer for eight years and is currently acting in the same role for AVA Publishing. She was a D&AD judge in 2008. Her new book, Design Diaries: Creative Process in Graphic Design was published by Laurence King in 2010. Early in 2011 Roberts co-founded GraphicDesign& to explore the essentially outward-looking nature of design practice.
www.luciennerobertsplus.com
www.graphicdesignand.com

GraphicDesign&
I will be talking about the inception of the publishing and events enterprise GraphicDesign& and its relation to research and to my design practice.
Co-founded by Lucienne Roberts [founder of the London design studio LucienneRoberts+] and Rebecca Wright [course director of BA Graphic Design and Graphic Design + Photography, Kingston University, UK] GraphicDesign& launched in April 2011.
While on a research trip for the book Design Diaries: Creative Process in Graphic Design [Laurence King, 2010], Rebecca and I took refuge from winter rain and chill in the café of the Stedelijk Museum CS. A breakfast coffee became wine and some hearty soup as we enthused about the projects included in our book: how they demonstrated what graphic design does best ­– connect with the rest of the world – and bemoaned that the essentially outward-looking nature of our practice is often not made explicit. Gradually an idea took shape. GraphicDesign&. The clue is in the name of course… GraphicDesign& publishes books and papers, hosts events and uses its online presence to explore the symbiotic nature of graphic design practice and celebrate how graphic design is always inextricably partnered with something else. In my conference presentation I will summarise the collaborative process behind our first outputs, which explore GraphicDesign& Knowledge, GraphicDesign& Social Science, GraphicDesign& Literature and GraphicDesign& Religion, and will outline the Bliss Bibliographic Classification system that determines our subject pairings. Each GraphicDesign& project connects graphic design to one of the myriad of subject areas it classifies. From philosophers to chemists, anthropologists to economists, psychologists to theologians, every GraphicDesign& output is a partnership between graphic designers and experts in another field. Varying in tone, perspective and ambition each is a new piece of work, designed to appeal to the culturally curious and be educationally valuable in the broadest sense. The premise that underpins the Bliss system is particularly relevant to our objectives. Critical of the systems available to him, the American librarian Henry Bliss working in the 1930s and 1940s, developed an adaptable method that provides distinct rules but allows for a subject to be put in more than one place, a concept called ‘alternative location’. Bliss used every character available on his extensive and rather eccentric typewriter in developing his system. WFG is the code for Graphic Design. To demonstrate the ‘real world’ relevance of GraphicDesign& I will draw upon the experience of various LucienneRoberts+ design projects, most particularly a live exhibition project entitled Brains: The Mind as Matter which opens at the Wellcome Collection galleries in March 2012. I will outline the research that we are undertaking to develop an appropriate design system to demonstrate how graphic design, in this case paired with medicine/biology/history/cultural studies [and more] is being best utilised.

13.01.2012
17.20 – 17.50

Jorge Meza Aguilar is full time professor and Head of the Design Department at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. He studied Graphic Design followed by a MFA in Visual Communication and a MSc in Systems Engineering. He also studied Etching, Drawing and Poster Design for two years at the Academy of Fine Arts Jan Majteiko in Kraków. He works in Innovation, Strategic Design and Digital Media fields at his own company Estrategas Digitales (www.estrategasdigitales.com). He is PHD absolvent with a research is in Digital Arts.

Design Education, interdisciplinary work and innovation for social needs
Problems are everyday more complex and required a real collaborative work to get solved. During the last years, our Design Department has been encouraging out of the box thinking providing new learning models for innovation processes. During a one-semester interdisciplinary course, our students from Graphic, Industrial, Textile and Interactive Design work on new business, product or service ideas, through user centered research, design thinking and conceptual prototyping, around different local problems to whom they develop different systematic, holistic and strategic design solutions. These 'diploma' projects are addressing complex needs of Mexican users, coming from diverse economic, social and cultural backgrounds and had been very successful.

13.01.2012
11.40 – 12.10

Guillermina Noël is a visual communication designer. She first graduated from the University of La Plata, Argentina in 1997. She received a Master of Design degree from the University of Alberta, Canada in 2006. She is now completing her PhD in the Sciences of Design at the University IUAV of Venice, Italy; supported by a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). For the last nine years her research has focused on the design of materials for adults with severe speech and reading impairments. Her research in this area emphasizes the importance of applying an evidence-based and a user-centred design approach. She has taught design at the National University of La Plata, Argentina and at the University of Alberta, Canada. As well as workshops at the Philadelphia Institute of the Arts, United States; and the University Positivo, Brasil.

Imroving the visual material to assess word-comprehension in people with aphasia: a research study
This paper presents a study that forms part of my doctoral dissertation on how can visual communication design contribute to the assessment of aphasia. Aphasia is a communication disability caused by brain damage that affects speaking, understanding speech, reading, and writing. My study investigates the impact of the type of task and of the visualization on the matching of words and pictures. Word-picture matching is an activity used to assess comprehension of written words. The study takes a qualitative approach and employs interviews with people with aphasia. To do the interviews, I designed four different prototypes. I used this material with 6 people with aphasia and 2 people without aphasia. The interviews provided rich insight into the cognitive process people with aphasia follow when using the materials. Moreover, the data offered insight into the visual features that might facilitate this process. This project takes the first step in understanding the impact of visual design on aphasia assessment.

12.01.2012
11.10 – 11.40

Severin Wucher (* 1976) is a designer and consultant at Berlin-based design network Plural, specialized in Visual Systems, Editorial Design as well as in Design Research. He taught Information Design as a Guest Professor at the Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin) and at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle/Germany. He gives lectures, holds workshops and takes part in juries at numerous international universities and design-related institutions. Currently he is co-organising a conference on reforming design education in Germany and is - which turns out to be kind of a life-task - working on his research project on the history of graphic design in Germany.

Visual research – Approaching a history of graphic design in Germany
Doing research on visual objects and the question of how to present the results: That is what museums and archives do, and it is a complex process. Art historians and curators create links between objects, they find relations between those objects and other persons, institutions and places. The use of databases or spreadsheet applications has been making it way easier to organise and overlook extensive research projects, but the researchers are faced with the problem that databases tend to be quite uncomfortable to use or demand un-intuitive workflows. These constraints are the main reason why databases or spreadsheet applications mostly are seen like digital a slip boxes, but not as powerful and intelligent tools in order to visualise and structurise data. Furthermore, this specific way of working with databases dramatically reduces the potential of raw data within the mediating process. Thus, insights are found beyond the powerful database-context, as for example in illustrated texts in catalogues or in exhibitions. The Interactive Research Table methodologically and technologically unifies tools which are normally used in separated ways: tools to collect, capture, structurise, contextualise and present objects. Invented by Berlin-based design research institute Plural, the Research Table successfully helped strating a complex research project on the history of Graphic Design in Germany (1900-2010) at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). Whereas in conventional workflows those connections and resulting questions might stay uncovered, the concept of visual-based research can lead to new and surprising insights and can help to reveal questions much easier.

11.01.2012., 17.30 – opening of the final workshop presentation

Typography for kids!
Typography workshop: designing typefaces for children's book

Ann Bessemans (1983) studied graphic design at the PHL University College (PHL). Her graduation project was awarded a national prize. She teaches typography and graphic design at the PHL and is working on a PhD thesis at the Universities of Leiden and Hasselt, in association with the PHL. Prof. Gerard Unger is her supervisor and Prof. Dr. Bert Willems the co-supervisor. She has received a grant from Microsoft USA (Cleartype & Advanced Reading Technologies) for her research, in which among other things she develops typefaces for children with a visual impairment. Ann Bessemans is since 2008 a designer for Vlees & Beton/Voids & Borders (mainly book design).

Filip Blažek works as a full-time graphic designer since 1993. In 2000, he graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University in Prague. Apart from being a designer, he is a co-author of Praktická typografie (Typography in practice), ComputerPress, 2000, 2004. He regularly contributes to professional periodicals in the field of graphic design. He is a founder and a member of the editorial office of TYPO magazine, which focuses on typography, graphic design and visual communication. He is an owner of the Typo.cz server, dedicated to Czech and international graphic design. Since 1999, he lectures on type and corporate identity. He is the Czech deputy of the international organisation ATypI. www.designiq.eu

Martin Majoor (1960) started his type design career in the mid-1980s. He designed the award-winning typeface FF Scala, the first serious text face to be published by FSI FontShop International in 1990. In 1993 FF Scala was augmented with a sans-serif version, FF Scala Sans, in which the sans follows the same principle of form as the serif. Worldwide the Scala family has established a position as a 'classic' among the new digital typefaces. In 1994 Majoor designed the Dutch telephone directory, for which he did both the typography and, more importantly, created an exclusive typeface for it: Telefont. Majoor’s third major typefamily, FF Seria was released in 2000. A year later it was awarded a "Certificate of Excellence" from the ISTD International TypoGraphic Awards in London and a "Certificate of Excellence in Type Design" from the ATypI Type Design Competition "Bukva:raz!" in Moscow. The FF Nexus family (2004) has three versions that are all 'connected': a serif, a sanserif and a slabserif. It was one of FontShops first OpenType fonts and two years later it won a first prize at the Creative Review Type Design Awards 2006. Besides working as type designer, Majoor has designed several books. For eleven years he was the graphic designer of the Warsaw Autumn Festival in Poland. He taught typography and gave workshops at several Schools of Art, he gave lectures at conferences in Paris, San Francisco, Barcelona, The Hague, Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, Katowice, Stockholm, Vienna and Seoul. He wrote articles for magazines like Items, 2+3D and Eye, and he contributed to several books on typography. Majoor works in both The Netherlands and in Poland. www.martinmajoor.com

Marian Misiak studied sociology at The University of Warsaw and type design in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication in University of Reading (UK). He worked at Neville Brody's Researchstudios in London before collaborating on a number of magazines and newspapers in his native Poland. Marian was also invited to work with several institutions on projects related to Polish culture. He is passionate about multiscript typography and typedesign and is currently living in Amman, Jordan, where he is exploring the subtleties of Arabic script and language and conducting research into visual culture in the Middle East. He represents half of the design duo BerszMisiak. His Latin-Arabic font will be published soon by Rosettatype.com a new typefoundry with focus on multiscript typography. www.berszmisiak.com

Eben Sorkin recently created his own foundry (Sorkin Type Co.) and isng University UK. 毐灁翿<h퀀Ὺ䚈ᖖEben’s dissertation included a scientific experiment looking at how and why reading speed decreases when text is negatively tracked. Eben is passionate about the potential of empirical methods’ to contribute to both the usefulness the and pleasure provided by typography and type design. Eben spent February and March of 2009 learning how to carve letters in stone from Lida Cardozo at the Cardozo Kindersley workshop, Cambridge UK, and collaborating with Lida on two typefaces used by her workshop. He is currently living in Boston MA, USA. ebensorkin.wordpress.com

Arleta Sternal University of Silesia, Katowice Fine Arts Education, majoring in Commercial Design / MA in art
I like attaining new skills. Commercial design is my job and hobby. I know that designing for children is hard, so I want to know how to do it correctly.

Bogna Kowalska graduated New Media Art, Polish-Japanese Institute of Information Technology / master degree (Education of Art, Opole University)
I explore letter forms in ceramics, animation, graphic design works which relate to particular subject and purpose. I expand that experience as much as I can. My recent projects have educational character. Typography medium is a great tool to understand communicating process. FontLab is another way to develop sign forms, to visualize news for changing receiver.

Szymon Sznajder Graphic design student at University of Arts in Poznań
At the beginning of my studies I got interested in Typography. I have become a member of Sign and Typography Studio, (supervisor: Krzysztof Kochnowicz) and I have participated in others connected with visual communication. What is more, I have some achievements in field of typography e.g. (1) award in competition to design the new logo of Gniezno city; (2) publication of Simonella typeface in ‶Projektowanie Graficzne w Polsce” (Jacek Mrowczyk and Michał Warda, 2010). I have taken part in workshops directed by David Březina (Aug 2009) and Łukasz Dziedzic (Dec 2010). Now, I am designing a new type with Polish signs as my project for Bachelor's degree. I am really interested in typography, especially I am fascinated by improving type quality for youngs and adults with dyslexia. I am highly motivated to make a progress in Typography and I would like to follow my passion further. That is why I would like to participate in ‶Ala ma Fonta” workshop. I believe that it will give me an opportunity not only to improve my knowledge and skills, but also to establish new relationships. I think it will be a fruitful experience for me and your good investment as well.

Szymon Celej graduated New Media Art, Polish-Japanese Institute of Information Technology. Graphic designer
I would like to take part in the workshop because I'm interested in creating new font and learning about this subject. This is a unique opportunity to improve my knowledge and skills.

Zofia Oslislo ASP Katowice / teacher in new media publication / graphic designer
I would like to take part in this workshop because I found the topic very interesting. I am a book and web sites designer and I work with type all the time. As an assistant I also teach students about typefaces and how to use them at various workshops at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. The topic – typeface for children – interests me particularly – because it is at the same time very elementary and very complex. I had a chance to be a part of the team organizing the competinion ‶A book well designed – let's start from children” . During this contest and conference I had the opportunity to come across lots of problems and challenges which are connected with designing for children.

Viktoriya Grabowska (Gadomska) Assistant in the studio of Typography and Sign UA in Poznan / designer works for Morski studio
I am a graphic designer understood as the wide spectrum of activity in the subject. The typeface design is the most important part of my interests and I wish to stay the main one in the future. I would like to learn more about typeface design. I admire and value the achievements of this workshop's instructors.

Tomasz Fabianowicz Wydział Wzornictwa Przemysłowego ASP Warszawa / Graphic designer
In my work I’m rather concentrated on typesetting and DTP than designing fonts. But I often work for publishers who make handbooks for children and I see their poor approach to this subject. I think that this workshops will give me a good opportunity to share experience with interesting people, give me much knowledge and will be a great adventure ;]

Elementari is a mono-linear script font dedicated to help children, aged 6–7, who are at a stage of learning to write. It combines elements of easy writing and good legibility. It is an attempt to take a fresh look at abc-scripts fonts and clean them from the traditional, and historical influences. Elementari is a slightly slanted typeface reflecting the natural writing movements, yet without the addition of ornamentation found in other scripts. Caps were treated separately. They are not connected with the lower case letters, but their shapes refer to simple sans serif letters. Elementari is a fully functioning open type font, that automatically selects the appropriate connection between letters. My aim is to complete a family of text fonts that work with the abc-script.

Grzegorz Owczarek ASP Katowice / Student
In my opinion typefaces design is one of the most challenging fields of graphic design. There are so many restrictions, problems and correlations which are the reason for designer's work. I want to learn some technical aspects of typefaces design, which can be useful in my own projects, and meet face to face the artists who are concerned with typefaces design.

Barbara Bigosińska graduated Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice / Graphic designer student-assistant in typography class
I believe this workshop is a great investment in myself and my education. I see it also as an amazing opportunity to learn something new from specialists and as a result become more conscious while dealing with typography for kids. I am sure it will be well spent time. I could gain some priceless experience to use it in my later work.

Martyna Bargiel Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice / MA student graphic desiger
I am keen on participating in the workshop because I’m passionate about graphic design and my main purpose is constant making my skills and abilities better – to be a true professional. The field of font design seems to me a fascinating ground and additionally, this kind of knowledge is very difficult to gain for a student. Moreover, presence of the experts active in many areas of both design and science, makes the workshop really valuable and enriching in the aspect of exploring different opinions. I think I would definitely be a careful and enthusiastic participant as I love to learn new things.

Joanna Biedna Faculty of Architecture, Wrocław University of Technology; Diploma February 2010 / Architect
I am interested in designing for children, because I believe, that it is very important to teach esthetics from the very beginning, by means of well designed toys, books, illustrations. Unfortunately nowadays people in Poland are not well enough educated in esthetics, very often they do not feel the beauty, colors and good quality. I know, that it is also because we have a big esthetic mess on the streets because of ‶cheap” advertisement, not designed graphics, furniture and everyday things just things made by.. someone, and people do not feel it at all. They are used to living surrounded by trash. Therefore I think it is important to work on their esthetic feeling from their childhood. Fonts in children books are in my opinion double important: they can also make children motivated to read at all and give them fun from reading books. And I like well designed books.

Marcin Kasperek ASP Katowice / MA student
Why this workshop? I would like to know the rules of the typefaces design. I hope it helps to better understand the structure of text, which is always a part of graphic design. In my opinion the effort of typeface structure design will be helpful in getting wise in legibility and readability in typography and helps in achieving purposefully the best typefaces for project functions. What's more, as long as I remember I've wished to try and design a typeface, but I wasn't brave enough to do it – workshop is the best time to take a challenge.

Anna Bil ASP Katowice / MA student
I'm glad, that I can take part in this workshop. The first reason is that I am interested in graphic design in general and I am particularly keen on illustrations for children. It will be nice, if I could combine the knowledge about typography and illustration. Despite the fact that the idea of creating new fonts has always seemed very difficult to me, I am very curious how to do this. And now there is a good opportunity to try! What I like very much is the concept of this workshop which includes lectures and practical tasks. I hope, it will help me to get more information about typography, type design, graphic design for kids and graphic design in general.

Kamil Kamysz Assistant at Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Faculty of Industrial Design, Department of Visual Communication For the last two years I have been working with kids, supervising design courses for children at Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (in cooperation with Children’s University in Krakow).
I’d like to take part in the workshop mainly because I have recently started working on my PhD thesis. The subject is An interactive children’s book for iPad. Working on typeface design during this workshop could greatly help in my work.

Agnieszka Małecka ASP Katowice / lecturer in graphic design I don’t know enough about fonts and I know nothing about how to design them.
I have always wanted to have a go at it and this is a great opportunity. I have struggled with a decision only because It will be very difficult to organize time for it + I will be a 100% beginner! I don’t know about other participants (?). I like working with details, mastering them. I think I’m more a type than (for example a poster person), so maybe I am a type type?

Agata Szydłowska

Alecos Papadatos

Anja Stöffler

Gerard Unger

Guillermina Noël

Jennifer Williams & Ian Gwilt

Indra Kupferschmid

Jan Kubasiewicz

Jerzy Gołuchowski

Joachim Sauter & Jussi Ängeslevä

Jorge Frascara

Jorge Meza Aguilar

Karel van der Waarde

Karolina Konieczna

lapikon

Lucienne Roberts

Marina Emmanouil

Marja Seliger

Richard B. Doubleday

Severin Wucher

Tiina Kymäläinen

Agata Szydłowska (ur. 1983) jest kuratorką i krytyczką dizajnu. Ukończyła historię sztuki na Uniwersytecie Warszawskim. W Szkole Nauk Społecznych przy Instytucie Filozofii i Socjologii PAN przygotowuje pracę doktorską na temat związków polskiego projektowania graficznego po 1945 roku z tożsamością narodową. Od bieżącego roku akademickiego współpracuje z poznańską School of Form prowadząc zajęcia w ramach bloku antropologii dizajnu. Publikuje m. in. w „2+3D”. Współpracuje m. in. ze Stowarzyszeniem Twórców Grafiki Użytkowej. Interesuje się społecznym i politycznym funkcjonowaniem dizajnu oraz metodologią badań nad projektowaniem graficznym i jego historią.

Agata Szydłowska (b. 1983) is a design critic and curator. She graduated art history from the Warsaw University. Currently she is a PhD student at the Graduate School for Social Research at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences where she prepares a dissertation on the relations between Polish graphic design after 1945 and the national identity. From the current academic year she has collaborated with the School of Form in Poznań where she has lectured within a frame of the design anthropology block. She has published in "2+3D" and she has collaborated with the Association of Polish Graphic Designers among others. She is interested in sociological and political aspects of graphic design and the methodology of the research on its history.

Pisanie o projektowaniu dla projektantów
Trzydniowe warsztaty poświęcone podstawowym problemom związanym z techniką i metodologią pisania tekstów na temat projektowania graficznego adresowane są do studentów kierunków projektowych.
Uczestnicy będą mieli szansę zdobyć praktyczną wiedzę i umiejętności dotyczące:

• formułowania tematu pracy
• gromadzenia i selekcji materiałów potrzebnych do napisania tekstu
• konstrukcji i podstawowych zasad redakcji tekstu na temat dizajnu
• problematyzowania zagadnień związanych z historią i współczesnością dizajnu w oparciu o refleksję z różnych dziedzin humanistyki oraz własne doświadczenia i przemyślenia
• klarownego i systematycznego przedstawienia wyników własnych badań i przemyśleń przed słuchaczami
• formułowania własnych wniosków i refleksji
• krytycznej refleksji na temat przedmiotu pracy oraz zgromadzonej literatury

Celem warsztatów jest wyposażenie uczestników w przydatne narzędzia, które pomogą im w pracy nad tekstami przygotowywanymi przez nich w ramach studiów jako część programu nauczania na kierunkach projektowych. Umiejętności zdobyte podczas warsztatów mają także pomóc przyszłym projektantom w przedstawianiu własnych pomysłów i koncepcji klientom i zleceniodawcom. Przed rozpoczęciem zajęć uczestnicy otrzymają wybór lektur w formie elektronicznej oraz będą mieli możliwość bezpośredniego kontaktu z prowadzącą w przypadku pojawienia się pytań, refleksji i wątpliwości związanych z czytanymi tekstami.
Warsztaty będą składać się z następujących części:

• 1 dzień: omówienie lektur z użyciem ilustracji z historii dizajnu lub współczesnej kultury wizualnej; krótki kurs warsztatu pisarskiego
• 2 dzień: praca nad własnymi tematami oraz poszukiwania materiałów ilustracyjnych
• 3 dzień: prezentacja abstraktów i "esejów wizualnych", omówienie; dyskusja podsumowująca o tym, jak można wykorzystać teorię do własnej działalności projektowej

13.01.2012
14.30 – 15.00

born in 1959 in Greece, studied Economics but in 1986 he gets professionally involved with his passion for drawing and design. Ever since, he has worked as animator, cartoon designer, director and comic book author. He is one of of the LOGICOMIX creative team. His work on this project will be the topic of his presentation in Katowice. Currently he works on a graphic novel entitled Democracy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbx9M-n7nCU
Logikomiks. W poszukiwaniu prawdy | Facebook

The way from the very first, passionate discussion on the idea of a graphic novel to the completion of the book is long and the experiences innumerable. The comics artist rarely speaks except through brief, out of the box, interviews. This is an opportunity to share with you the moments that lie hidden behind the drawn characters, their surroundings, the panel compositions, the color in this particular creative adventure of Logicomix. We will follow the stages of production from script to the final, colored page.

12.01.2012
17.20 – 17.50

After graduating from the academy of fine arts in Berlin, Joachim Sauter studied at the 'German Academy for Film and Television', Berlin. Since the early 1980s, he has been working as a media artist and designer. From the beginning, Joachim Sauter has focussed on digital technologies and is experimenting how they can be used to express content, form, and narration. Fuelled by this interest, he founded ART+COM in 1988 together with other artists, designers, scientists, and technologists. Their goal was to practically research this new up-and-coming medium in the realm of art and design. Until now, he is leading this interdisciplinary group. In the course of his work he was invited to participate on many exhibitions. Beside others he showed his work at 'Centre Pompidou' Paris, 'Stejdilik Museum' Amsterdam, 'Museum for Contemporary Art' Sidney, 'Deichtorhallen Hamburg' , Kunsthalle Wien, 'Venice Biennial', 'ICC' Tokyo, 'Getty Center' Los Angeles, 'ZKM' Karlsruhe. He received several awards like the 'Golden Lion, Cannes', the 'D&AD Black Pencil', the 'Ars Electronica Interactive Award', the 'Los Angeles Interactive Media Award', the 'Prix Pixel INA', the 'BAFTA British Academy for Film and Television Interactive Award', ADC New York and ADC Germany Gold, the 'Grand Clio', the 'Red Dot Grand Prix', the "Designaward of the Federal Republic of Gemany" and many other national and international awards'. Since 1991 he is full professor for "New Media Art and Design" at the 'University of the Arts' Berlin and since 2001 adjunct professor at UCLA, Los Angeles.

Being involved in academia, design industry and conducting his individual experimental work, Jussi Ängeslevä is focussing on embodied interfaces, experiences and services for the public. His work as Creative Director at ART+COM media design agency is consistently yielding international recognition in exhibitions, installations and awards. In parallel he is an honorary professor at the Berlin University of the Art teaching Digital Media Design and has been serving as a juror, chair or advisor in various academic and design bodies such as D&AD, ARS Electronica, TEI and Siggraph. His design ethos is leveraging hardware, software, physical and graphic design in the search for elegance in highly specific solutions, where the meaning of a work is inseparable from the medium communicating it.

The Renaissance of Space
We generally see a renaissance of the physical world as a reaction onto now nearly two decades of communication in the virtual world of the internet. We see an increasing number of people leaving the isolated situation in front of a computer at home, going into a museum and other narrative spaces to experience information in a physical environment together with other people. The big difference in designing these narrative spaces compared to the design approach in the pre-digital times is that the visitors are now computer literate and know about the qualities of the digital medium such as interaction, collaboration, networking and want to find them also in the physical space. The presentation will review key-projects projects from ART+COMs 23 years history and traces the development of new media from screen to space.

Karolina Konieczna (ur. 1988) jest absolwentką studiów licencjanckich na Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Katowicach na kierunku projektowanie graficzne. W ramach obronionej w 2011 roku pracy dyplomowej, zaprojektowała magazyn wykorzystujący techniki stereoskopowego przedstawiania obrazu począwszy od tradycyjnej analogowej fotografii po wpółczesne programy graficzne takie jak 3ds Max. W projektowaniu interesuje ją poszukiwanie nowych, innowacyjnych technologii zaczerpniętych ze współczesnej nauki.

Karolina Konieczna Karolina Konieczna (b. 1988) is a graduate from Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in the direction of graphic design. Within defended in 2011 thesis, she designed magazine presenting different stereoscopic techniques from the traditional analogue photography to contemporary graphics programs such as 3ds Max. In designing she is interested in search for new, innovative technologies derived from modern science.

program warsztatów
syllabus

12.01.2012
12.50 – 13.20

Tiina Kymäläinen has a Master of Arts degree from AALTO University, the University of Art and Design, where she is also currently carrying out postgraduate studies in the Department of Design. The author also works as a research scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, where she has been studying future user interfaces and smart spaces for more than twelve years. To date, her dearest projects have been virtual space computer games with floor sensor controls (Lumetila, 2001) and an interactive playground for children (UbiPlay, 2003). Her current work is related to Do-it-Yourself Smart Experiences for smart spaces. The research framework is graphic-, interaction- and human-centred design.

Graphic design and smart environment research
Smart/intelligent environment research refer to technological development processes that aim e.g. to offer support for multi-device user interaction in smart environments or design processes of user interface (UI) and applications in smart environment context. Experimenting and piloting smart environments, particularly with visual means; visualisations, paper- and animation prototypes, graphical UI:s and graphic layout models, are significant part of smart environment research. Graphic design is also an essential part of user-centred research, since visual material is required in order to communicate with users or within the research team about, often very complex, contexts. There will be concrete examples and visualizations of the smart environment research projects in the lecture.

13.01.2012
16.40 – 17.10

Richard B. Doubleday is an Assistant Professor of Art in the Department of Graphic Design at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. He has lectured and led courses and workshops in London, Japan, Mexico, and China, including, recently, at the Nanjing Arts Institute. In June 2011, he chaired the Fine Arts curriculum committee at Lebanese American University in Beirut. Doubleday has exhibited in international competitions, including the International Poster Triennial in Toyama, Japan, and the Lahti International Poster Biennial. Doubleday’s work was recently published in The Poster: 1,000 Posters from Toulouse-Lautrec to Sagmeister (2010). He is a contributing author for Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design (2012), and Meggs’ History of Graphic Design (2012), and was a guest juror at the Tokyo Type Directors Club Annual Awards and a contributing writer for the Tokyo TDC Vol. 20 (2009).

A Visual Investigation of Contemporary Cultural Identity
A Visual Investigation of Contemporary Cultural Identity The talk will focus on the exploration of different cultures through design. It will begin with Doubleday’s own visual exploration and continue with a discussion of student design solutions. He will begin with a discussion of his study of German and Japanese symbol systems. Following he will discus student design solutions from class projects in England, and examples from week-long workshops comparing and contrasting the cities of Boston and Nanjing. The results combined Eastern and Western imagery with English text and Chinese calligraphy to form a unique and unusual juxtaposition of design elements. The graduate student projects were rewarding collaborations and cross-cultural dialog in the graphic arts. He will then show student typographic animated narratives around the many different aspects of violence in contemporary society, concluding with motion graphic examples based on the melodrama Pierrot Lunaire, Op.21.

13.01.2012
12.20 – 12.50

Marina Emmanouil born in Athens, Greece (1977). Marina is a lecturer at the Visual Communication Design Department at the Izmir University of Economics in Turkey since September 2010. She teaches practice and theory in the area of visual communication (graphic design) at an undergraduate level. She graduated with a BA (Hons) in Graphic Design (2001) from the University of Hertfordshire (UK) and an MA in the History of Design (2004) from the Royal College of Art (UK), where she commenced her PhD research on post-1945 graphic design in Greece. Her viva-voce examination was held in September 2011 and it is expected to complete her PhD studies in 2012. Her primary academic and research interests lie in the field of the history of graphic design, advertising and visual communication, and in the area of information design, tactile graphics, haptic information design, museum and accessibility. With her design practice, Marina contributes to the development of accessibility programmes for visually impaired people in museums in the UK, the USA, and Greece. During her graphic design training, Marina worked as a tactile production assistant at the National Centre for Tactile Diagrams in 2001. Since then she participated to the implementation of educational programmes at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston MA (2005), where she was responsible for designing tactile diagrams of artworks from permanent collections and exhibitions. Her most recent work is the coordination and implementation of the educational programme for the visually impaired at the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, for the Pre-Columbian Art exhibition in 2009. She is now working on a team project that works for the implementation of an accessibility programme for adults and students with visual impairments for a museum collection/exhibition of their choice (to be completed in Athens in 2012).

Graphic Designer + User + Specialist(s): Calling for a triple co-operation in the area of haptic information design
Making exhibitions accessible to partially sighted and blind people has nowadays become a commonplace practice in most major museums around the world. However, the active participation of this special audience to the production of accessibility programmes is something novel. A participatory approach, otherwise a fairly well-defined and well-implemented practice in the design world in the last decades, constitutes a fresh field of inquiry in the specific area of haptic information design (hid). This paper reports from my experience as a graphic designer in co-designing tactile graphics for and with visually impaired people (vip) for making a museum exhibition accessible to this special audience. The presentation takes up as a case study the Accessibility Programme developed for the temporary exhibition ‘The Pre-Columbian Art at the Benaki Museum’ in Athens, Greece, in 2009. The User contribution comprised the development and production of tactile materials: graphics, maps, Braille catalogue, and collection-inspired pottery, which were displayed at the exhibition space. Despite the initial enthusiastic response of the users’ institutions to the Programme proposal, and the good reviews given by the guided tour participants and exhibition visitors, the significantly low attendance to the tours raised several questions. Being the co-designer and coordinator of this project, I would like to share my experience in its implementation, and particularly, report on implications entailed in the collaboration of the stakeholders (designer, museum staff, vip and associated institutions) in the case study under examination. My goal is to describe the process or channels of interaction between the collaborators, spot out the gaps or/and problems, and suggest possible clusters of interaction for future projects by proposing a workable worksheet/schedule. Besides describing the process of this collaboration and identifying the beneficial qualities of the ‘Designer-User’ alliance, this presentation hopes to raise awareness of the importance of a triple cooperation between three types of actors (Designer, User, Specialist(s)) in the museum context, and in this particular area of research (hid) that is currently lacking behind contemporary input. In particular, given the advanced technological tools available today, the link between current research on non-visual perception (or other alternative research fields, for example synesthesia), tactile graphics development and production could be stronger. Last but not least, specialised training on the side of the graphic designer is far from being a reality, and thus a subject to be addressed urgently for an ‘all inclusive’ society in call.

12.01.2012
16.40 – 17.10

Anja Stöffler Professor of Digital Media Head of Media Design, Institute of Media Design Mainz After studying Communication Design at the University of Wuppertal, Anja Stöffler worked for the television stations RTL, Arte, Nickelodeon and ZDF in Departments of Corporate Design, TV Motion and Branding. In 2000 she switched to Razorfish Frankfurt as the Head of the Department Experience Network. Since 2001 Anja Stöffler has been teaching as a Professor of Digital Media at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz. Her teaching focuses on applied and experimental projects in the fields of Motion Graphics, Animation and TV Motion. With students and external partners projects have been developed for 3sat, ZDF, RTL, SWR and Adobe Systems. Anja Stöffler's main areas of research are in Digital Media and their presentation within Time Based Design. She was responsible for the establishment of the cooperation CME (Consortium Meda Education) between ZDF and the University of Applied Sciences Mainz. In cooperation with Prof. Ralf Dringenberg of the University of Design Schwäbisch Gmünd foundation of the z zg - Zentrum Zeitbasierte Gestaltung (Centre for Time Based Design) in 2010. Conception and realization of the exhibition "Moving Types - Lettern in Bewegung" with Ralf Dringenberg and Harald Pulch.

Kristofer Oedekoven, M.A. Assistant Department of Design, University of Applied Sciences Mainz, Germany
Kristofer Oedekoven has studied North American Studies with emphasis on media, culture, and politics at the University of Bonn. April 2010 he started working at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, assisting during the development of ‶Moving Types – Lettern in Bewegung”. Since October 2010 Kristofer Oedekoven has been responsible for the coordination of interdisciplinary teaching at the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz.

Moving Types Letters in Motion A retrospective of typography in film from the early days of the cinema to the present
Types”– letters in motion – have been a prevalent stylistic element for typography on television, cinema and computer screens since moving pictures were invented just over a century ago. Still, only few people know that typographic animations are a longestablished media art form practiced by numerous international artists and designers. The exhibition ‶Moving Types– Letters in Motion” at the Gutenberg-Museum Mainz and shines a long-overdue spotlight on the genre and its practitioners. A myriad of examples reveals how letters and words gradually came to life, started moving and became multi-dimensional. They took on individual characteristics and even human traits, they turned into liquids and evaporated into thin air. The exhibit also illuminates how design concepts changed gradually over the years with the development of new aesthetic, technical and design possibilities. ‶Moving Types” is more than a media exhibition. It not only deals with media, it is in itself a media event, as demonstrated by the extraordinary exhibition design. The heart of the show is the ‶media lounge”. What makes it special is the remarkable amount of content coded onto small white cubes that seem to float in the space. Each cube stands for a short documentary, an educational piece or a movie excerpt, referred to by a so-called QR code on the cube itself. QR stands for ‶quick response” and the tags are special barcodes printed on the cubes. Visitors can wander through the media lounge and download and view the excerpts using iPads provided by the museum. The coding system using QR codes to access film excerpts also appears in the exhibition catalog, making it a ‶print catalog with a built-in cinema.”

13.01.2012
10.40 – 11.10

Indra Kupferschmid is a German designer and teacher at HBKsaar, Academy of Fine Arts Saarbrücken, where she holds a professorship in typography and heads the department of design and Masters program ‶Lettering & Type”. Alongside this she is occupied with book design, bitmap fonts and other type related projects, DIN committees, the history of Grotesks and discussing type classification. She is co-author of Helvetica forever by Lars Müller Publishers and other typographic reference books and writed for websites such as fontsinuse, typedia and typographica as well as her various own fun blogs and journals.

Typeface classification
It is a recurring phenomenon that we tend so sort what comes in large amounts to be able to grasp it more easily. Naming and classifying typefaces is a rather new occurrence in our 560 years of typography, which appeared with the plenty of jobbing type in the 19th century. In this talk I will look back to the use of names and terms in type specimens of the past and the attempts to systematize classification in the 1950s with schemes like ATypI Vox, British Standard and DIN. To get an idea of the user-perspective of sorting and naming typefaces I conducted a small survey among people with different typographic knowledge. I will present the results together with my ideas how to improve current classification schemes to make them appropriate for today’s needs.

Aalto University School of Art and Design

13.01.2012
18.00

Marja Seliger made her doctoral dissertation to Aalto University School of Art and Design in 2008 and the topic of her research was visual rhetoric in outdoor advertising. Marja Seliger is a professional graphic designer with extensive working experience in publishing design and educational materials production in Finland and abroad. She worked as graphic design professor at the University of Lapland and since 2009 as senior researcher at Aalto University. She supervises master of arts and doctoral theses and integrates research into practice within graphic design curriculum. She is the vice-president of Grafia, Association of Visual Communication Designers in Finland.

Practice-led Research in Graphic Design
The presentation brings forth the role of research in graphic design higher university education and proposes changes in curriculum to enhance research. Practice-led research projects can bridge masters of art and doctoral education and prepare students both for professional life and research. In today’s working life design research methods are applied in problem solving and creating artifacts. As the complexity of design problems increases, both artistic skills and theoretical knowledge are needed in design teams.

13.01.2012
18.00

discussion panel: moderator Marian Oslislo
Jerzy Gołuchowski, Jorge Frascara, Severin Wucher, Joachim Sauter, Lucienne Roberts, Ralf Dringenberg & Anja Stöffler, Kristofer Oedekoven, Tiina Kymalainen, Jennifer Williams & Ian Gwilt, Jan Kubasiewicz

Prof. dr hab. Jerzy Gołuchowski – Studiował na kierunku Cybernetyka Ekonomiczna i Informatyka w katowickiej Akademii Ekonomicznej, którą ukończył w 1978 roku. W 1988 roku obronił pracę doktorską. Stopień doktora habilitowanego uzyskał w 1998 roku, a tytuł profesora w 2006. Był inicjatorem powołania Katedry Inżynierii Wiedzy Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego w Katowicach, którą obecnie kieruje. W latach 2005-2009 pełnił funkcję prorektora ds. organizacyjnych Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego w Katowicach. Jako pełnomocnik rektora kierował pracami związanymi z utworzeniem nowego wydziału, następnie został wybrany dziekanem Wydziału Informatyki i Komunikacji. Działalność naukowa i dydaktyczna prof. Jerzego Gołuchowskiego jest związana z problematyką systemów zarządzania wiedzą, w szczególności baz i hurtowni danych, a także zagadnieniami modelowania organizacji. Wielką satysfakcję sprawia mu praca ze studentami. Zainteresowania pozazawodowe prof. Jerzego Gołuchowskiego to góry i historia.

Professor Jerzy Gołuchowski – studied Economic Cybernetics and Informatics at the University of Economics in Katowice, which he graduated in 1978. In 1988 he defended his Ph.D. thesis. In 1998 he achieved habilitation and in 2006 full professor. Professor Jerzy Gołuchowski was the initiator and is now the head of the Knowledge Engineering Department in University of Economics in Katowice. In 2005-2009 he was a Vice-Rector in Charge of Organizational Affairs in University of Economics in Katowice. As a representative of the Rector, he coordinated works connected with creation of a new department and then he was elected as a Dean of the Faculty of Informatics and Communication. Professor Jerzy Gołuchowski’s research and teaching is related to knowledge management systems, in particular with databases, data warehouses and organization modelling. Working with students gives him great satisfaction. Other interests of Professor Jerzy Gołuchowski are mountains and history.

13.01.2012
15.40 – 16.10

Karel van der Waarde studied graphic design in the Netherlands (Eindhoven) and in the UK (Leicester, Reading). He received his doctorate in 1994 for a dissertation entitled: "An investigation into the suitability of the graphic presentation of patient package inserts". In 1995, he started a design - research consultancy in Belgium specializing in the testing of information design. Most of the projects are related to information about medicines for patients, doctors and pharmacists. Typical products are information for patients (Bayer Pharmaceuticals, GSK, Proctor & Gamble, Novo Nordisk, Genzyme, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Omnicare, Tibotec, Centocor, ...), information for doctors and pharmacists (Ministry of Health, Brussel; BCFI, Ghent), labelling, and design of hospital protocols. Other projects are for example the development of user instructions for Philips, tax-form analysis for the Dutch Taxoffice, readability research for the Open University Netherlands, and information architecture for websites. Karel van der Waarde is also professor in Visual Rhetoric at AKV|St. Joost, Avans University, Breda (The Netherlands). He is on the editorial boards of "Visible Language", "Information Design Journal", "The Poster" and "Iridescent" and was editor of Information Design Journal between 2000 and 2004. He is moderator of the InfoDesign and InfoDesign-Café discussion lists, board member of the International Institute for Information Design (IIID) and a life-fellow of the Communication Institute of Australia (CRI).

Graphic design and research: love at first sight or an arranged marriage?
"In both graphic design practice and graphic design education there is an increased need to consider research activities. In practice, this is necessary to provide relevant arguments to inform and persuade commissioners. In education, research is seen as essential to reach an acceptable academic level of BA and MA-courses. Current questions about 'what is graphic design practice?', 'what is research?' and 'what should we teach?' are very hard to answer without a description of graphic design practice. Through a substantial number of interviews with graphic designers, a few patterns became clear that can be used as a basis for such a description. In this presentation, I'll show what these patterns are, how they relate to different research activities, and how both can be used in graphic design education."

12.01.2012
15.40 – 16.10

Ian Gwilt is Professor of Design and Visual Communication at Sheffield Hallam University. He holds a PhD from the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales, examining the theory and practice of mixed-reality art. He also has an MA in Interactive Multimedia, conferred jointly by the University of Balears (UIB) in Spain and the Royal College of Art (RCA) London, and a BA Hons in Educational Media Design from Manchester Metropolitan University. In addition to a number of years working in the field of visual communication design and visual communication design education he has shown interactive installations and digital work at a number of international new media events, galleries and exhibitions. His current practice/research is concerned with augmented reality and locative media, the graphical user interface as creative/cultural artifact, and exploring new forms and contexts for information design and post consumption visual communication forms.

Jennifer Williams is a researcher/ co-leader of the Visual Communication strand in the Institute for Sustainable Futures’ project, ‘Transitioning to Sustainable Sanitation Futures’ at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She has also lectured at UTS for the past ten years in visual communication design, principally in the fields of information design and typography. Jennifer is currently completing a PhD through which the potential of ‘critical design’ futures in visual communication practice and research is explored through transdisciplinary design. As a practitioner she worked for the Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa Tongarewa), where as a member of the initial core design team she designed a number of exhibitions, pan-museum signage and wayfinding systems.

Beyond the aesthetic: the yield of visual communication design in trans-disciplinary research
Contemporary design’s value no longer lies solely in the manufacture of want, but in an allegiance to a broader society. These shifting dimensions lead us to imagine design’s value afresh, asking how it’s role in negotiating an increasingly complex and multi-dimensional society can be underpinned and sharpened through research to both anticipate and plan change. We explore these potential roles for visual communication design through a transdisciplinary research project which is used to outline several emerging ways of thinking about design in research, principally through such lenses as critical practice, reflexive enquiry and speculative prototyping.