Visual Communications Design - Traditions and Futures; a Theoretical and Critical Framework

Abstract

Traditions and Futures; a theoretical and critical framework for visual communications design sets out to position the discipline within a contemporary theoretical and critical framework. The project is structured to elucidate discourses which visual communications design both produces and engages with from a number of different perspectives. These perspectives are addressed in three substantive sections through the constructs of traditions, futures, and languages and representational practices. Adopting a position which recognises the historiographic tradition of the discipline as a basis for its ongoing development, the argument shaping the theoretical and critical framework is informed by a theoretical lineage of traditional precedents. Future forms are located in the visual potential of the ever-advancing relationship between design and technology. The argument is bound together and supported by the silent knowledge of visual texts, texts whose language resonates across time both from within and outside of their technologies of production. Visual articulation or the giving of visual form to a concept or argument is considered both in terms of structuralist linguistic theoretical models and also in terms of visual theory which posits the visual as an autonomous and self referencing system of knowledge. Underpinning this argument for a theoretical and critical framework is an assertion of the empirical intelligence of visual language. The thesis considers, interprets, and structures theoretical positions and visual outcomes. Its content is determined by both traditional and contemporary alignments and the cultural values embedded in the communication contexts in which visual communication design operates as both product and expressive vehicle.