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Writing

Various academic papers on design I have authored or co-authored since the 1990s. All papers are downloadable except where the relevant publisher holds the copywright. Click on the paper title to download the paper or link to the publisher's site.

Roxburgh, M. & Cox, S. (2015) Visual Communication Design is the Centre of the Artificial Universe

presented at The Virtuous Circle, Cumulus 2015 International conference, Politechnico di Milano, Italy.  

 

This paper reports on a series of research projects undertaken over several years by groups of visual communication design students with the Customer Experience (CX) team at Westpac Bank, Australia's second largest bank by market capitalisation. The premise for running these projects was simple "what value could the visualisation and research skills of visual communication designers bring to the CX design process?" In reporting on these projects the authors argue that the problem solving model of design is increasingly redundant in service economies although note it is a pragmatic way of describing the complexity of design scenarios. More significantly the authors argue that with the growing trend in the use of visualisation techniques, for research and communication in service enterprises, that visual communication design is now the meta design discipline.

 

McAuley, M. & Roxburgh, M. (2015) Designerly Ways of Learning Theory: Combining Creative and Scholarly Methods of Inquiry

presented at The Virtuous Circle, Cumulus 2015 International conference, Politechnico di Milano, Italy. 

NB. This is the final pre-press draft of the paper presented.

 

This study presents and discusses the outcomes of an action research inquiry that set out to enhance novice first year visual communication[MR1]  student learning of design theory and history through the incorporation of creative practice methods commonly used in practical design studio environments. The methods involving creative thinking, visualisation and collaboration are described as interventions, introduced to support the critical and analytical thinking necessary to engage with theoretical discourse. They can also be thought of as learning strategies incorporated to enhance student learning. As educators of both design theory and practice, our previous observations of how novice visual communication design students engaged with theory, in comparison to how they engaged with practice, led us to the decision that change was required; change which would not only facilitate deeper understanding of theoretical discourse through the incorporation of creative practice methods, but also help students to recognise a more symbiotic relationship between theory and practice. That was our ‘call to action’. Our findings suggest that different methods of thinking and doing can be effectively combined and that student learning can be enhanced when creative practice methods are employed within a critical studies context.

 

McAuley, M. & Roxburgh, M. (2015) Learning Theory Through Collaboration, Visualisation, and Audience Presentation

published in The Journal of tDesign Research, Vol 13, #4, 345-361

NB. This is the final pre-press draft of the paper that was published.

 

This study reports on a series of changes involving collaboration, visualisation and audience presentation that were incrementally added to a first year visual communication design theory course taught at the University of Newcastle, NSW. It will discuss novice, first year students experience of collaborating with peers and also look at how visual media methods were used in the construction of a theoretical argument. It responds to previous observations that many of our students were not engaging with theory at a deep intrinsic level, writing essays that were motivated by the extrinsic demands of passing a course rather than actual fascination with the theoretical dimensions of design. In contrast, visual communication design students thrive in studio environments where collaboration and immersion in visual methods of working are the norm. We put forward here, the argued position that student learning of design theory can be enhanced through the incorporation of working methods commonly used in creative practice.

 

Roxburgh, M. (2015) Depiction as Theory and Writing by Practice: The Design Process of a Written Thesis

in Rodgers, P. & Yee, J, (eds) The Routledge Companion to Design Research. 

NB. This is the final pre-press draft of the chapter that was published.

 

Most design academics I have met, over my twenty-year career in academia, could readily provide anecdotal accounts of the frustration they and their students feel in trying to reconcile their experience of their design practice and the academic requirements to write. I share those frustrations. During the past 15 - 20 years of my research I have frequently looked for concrete visual examples of techniques that would help reconcile the inclination to work visually with the process of writing, only to be disappointed little existed. The majority of the growing body of published material, on the disjuncture between creative visual practices and writing, are predominantly text-based explications of the ‘problem’, its history and causes, strategies for resistance, or responses to harness and / or overcome it - sometimes with a few images thrown in for good measure. This literature is emblematic of the crucial yet nascent maturation of the design discipline within the academy and there is much that is good, rebellious, re-assuring or instructive contained within it. Although there is still resistance at the fringes there is a consensus emerging that writing is good for creative practitioners.

 

Roxburgh, M. & Bremner, C. (2015) A Photograph is Evidence of Nothing But Itself

in Rodgers, P. & Yee, J, (eds) The Routledge Companion to Design Research  

NB. This is the final pre-press draft of the chapter that was published.

 

Design, and more specifically design research, in taking what we call the ethnographic turn, has adopted many research techniques from the allied disciplines of anthropology and sociology. In this chapter we present the case that this turn, while attractive to the discovery of the user and their experience, has occurred with little consideration for the fundamentally different enterprises that are ethnography and design. We look specifically at the use of photo-observation and note that its use is generally premised on the notion that the photograph is evidence. We argue that by viewing the photograph as ethnographic evidence we accept it on its own conditions and consequently it conditions us to see the world-as-is. However, design is concerned with what-might-become, and this conditioning is problematic for it results in the endless reproduction of the here-and-now. With specific reference to one of the author’s research projects we will demonstrate that if we regard the photograph as a form of question we recondition it to be a frame through which we can re-engage in the project of what-might-become.

 

Roxburgh, M. & Caratti, E. (2014) The Experience and Design of Stereotype

published in conference proceedings What's On: Cultural Diversity, Social Engagement, Shifting Education. Cumulus 2014 International conference, University of Aveiro, Portugal.

 

Our everyday life is influenced by an overproduction of images and by an iconogenic surplus that is connected to the proliferation of media. These contribute to both the quality and quantity of communication, but simultaneously amplify the knowledge gap between an audience that is able to critically process messages and another that is affected uncritically by prejudices and stereotypes. The need for a critical “media education” (Bellino 2010) is required to address this gap by encouraging the development of students' critical thinking and social awareness. In this paper we will discuss the results of a didactic experiment in which visual communication design students explored the potential of metaphor to critique the role of media in perpetuating cultural stereotypes. Where stereotype simplifies reality, metaphor extends beyond the simplification of reality toward the discovery of new communicative opportunities; here the link between ethics and esthetics is reinforced. To support the learning process of the participating students we assumed that the model of experiential learning (Kolb 1984) and the appeal to experiential metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) are the best way to deal with reality, its comprehension, its representation, and its transformation. Students were required to explore the potential of metaphor through the development of viral / guerilla communication campaigns that highlighted the role of the media in perpetuating stereotype.

 

McCauley, M. & Roxburgh, M. (2014) Learning Theory Through Collaboration and Visualization

in Conference Proceedings Ireland International Conference on Education, Dublin: IICE, October 27-30, pp 54-59.

 

This study reports on a series of changes involving collaboration and visualisation which were incrementally added to a first year design theory course taught at the university of Newcastle NSW. Theory teaching values explicit knowledge and focuses on analytical and critical thinking. It can be defined as a form of deductive reasoning in that it seeks to unearth that which exists, as determined through close analytical reading of research literature. Students who study visual communication design do so because of their interest in creativity and visual media. Creative thinking and tacit knowledge are highly valued. It would therefore seem that design studio teaching, with its reliance on creativity, tacit knowledge and inductive or abductive reasoning is misaligned with design theory teaching which values explicit knowledge and deductive reasoning. However, this paper will argue that student learning of theory can be enhanced through the incorporation of working methods commonly used in creative practice.

 

Roxburgh, M. (2013) The Images of the Artificial or Why Everything Looks the Same

published in The International Journal of the Image, Vol 3, #3, 1-16

NB. This is the final pre-press draft of the paper that was published.

 

Merleau-Ponty argues that perception is not merely the passive reception of visual data but an embodied, imaginative, and transformative experience. What is transformed through embodied perception is the perceiver of the world and the world perceived, in short our sense of reality. From this we can imagine the world as being fundamentally abstract, artificial and manipulable. This obviously raises questions about the nature of the realm of the material, of what we might call concrete reality. For design this appears untenable for though the perception of the world as-it-might-be functions on an abstract level, the changes we make are based upon our embodied experience of the world as-we-perceive-it. These changes then become operational at an apparent material, concrete, level. As design activity is concerned with transforming the world, quite literally in material form, this leads to design being imagined as the creation of the artificial world. In this paper I seek firstly to draw upon these parallel concerns with the imaginative and the artificial by examining the central role that the image plays in both. I will specifically interrogate the nature of the images of design and argue that because they are largely technical and increasingly ubiquitous – that is they are available to anyone with a camera phone, a computer and design software – that we are witnessing the erasure of the imaginary by the image. I will conclude by speculating on how we might resist such conditions.

 

Roxburgh, M. (2010) Photography and the Design Imperative

in Roxburgh, M. (ed) Light Relief (Part II), Sydney, DAB DOCS.

 

This chapter explores the relationship between photography and the reality that design creates. It argues that as photography conditions us to see reality in a very specific way hen designers need to develop a consciousness of this as well as a more active approach to how they look at the world they transform.

 

Roxburgh, M (2010) Design and the Aesthetics of Research 

in Visual Communication, Vol 9, #4, pp 423-439

 

In this visual essay I sketch out three key historical conceptions of design and the ramifications they have had on our perceptions and practice of it. I depict these conceptions as being drawn from traditions outside of design and suggests that an alternative strategy may lie within design itself. This strategy calls for an engagement with what I call the aesthetics of research. I suggest that it is imperative that design encompasses an aesthetic engagement with the world at all levels, and most importantly at the point of design research and conception, for our experience of design is fundamentally aesthetic. I am aware that there is an apparent irony in my use of non design theories to frame aspects of this view but this is a necessary strategy to critique the ontological assumptions inherent within the conceptions of design that I characterize (one could even say ‘caricatures’). I take the position that there is nothing essentially given about design consciousness. Rather, the characterizations of design consciousness that I outline all carry (usually implicit) ontological assumptions that may be inappropriate and/or limit design practice. The depiction of design that I offers is based instead on an alternative ontology. While this cannot be empirically verified (no ontology can), I propose it as a way of extending and critiquing usual conceptions of design practice. No doubt this in turn will be found to have shortcomings of its own.

 

Roxburgh, M (2008) The Reprediction of the Self: Digital Photography, Serendipity and the Mirror to the Future

in Thomas, T. (ed) Photo / Not Photo, Canberra, University of Canberra.

 

In this essay I will be discussing reality in relation to photographic practice. This has been a much debated and contested area and I am not interested in rehashing those debates to any great extent here. On one level I will be confining myself to a fairly simplistic and commonsense understanding of the term, not because I reject the essence of those debates but because, I would assert, the majority of people who take photographs do so unaware of them. For many people, though they are aware of the extent to which photographs can be manipulated, their normal domestic practice of photography revolves around documenting things, places and people that are real to them. In this sense photography and reality are conflated. It must be said however that as an academic and photographer I do not conflate the two and subscribe to Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacra that would position photographs as a kind of de-facto reality. Where I use the terms realism or realist I am not referring to notions of reality, I am specifically referring to photographs in which the content is highly congruent with the subject matter photographed. In making my argument I will firstly concentrate on digital photography as a domestic practice, that does not involve any significant post shooting computer manipulation, and then discuss the implications of this practice on ‘professional’ photography.

 

Roxburgh, M. & Sweetapple, K. (2007) The Cartography of Theory and Practice

in ConnectEd International Design Education Conference Proceedings UNSW: Sydney

 

Strickler argues that the growth of visual communication as an academic discipline can only occur if there is an “empirical bridge between theory and practice” (1999: 38). Such a bridge is also a precondition for the evolution of visual communication as a forward looking and reflective industry as opposed to one that simply responds to the dictates of the market. However, building this bridge is no easy task; visually articulate and practically oriented students are reluctant to engage with theories that may challenge their passionately held understandings of design. All the more so when the commonest mode such inquiry is conducted through is reading and writing. The challenges and problems of writing for visual thinkers has been well articulated by Grow (1994). That such students are resistant to forms that they are generally not well equipped for or confident in is hardly surprising. Couple this with a seemingly near universal questioning of the relevance of theory by aspiring practitioners and it would seem the odds are stacked against such an enterprise. In this paper we will reflect upon efforts to build this bridge through design theory curriculum using visual mapping tools drawn from constructivist education theory. The efficacy of these efforts is explored through both quantitative and qualitative student feedback.

 

Roxburgh, M. (2006) The Utility of Design Vision and the Crisis of the Artificial

in Bennet, A. (ed) Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design, Princeton Architectural Press: New York, pp 147-157

NB. This is the final pre-press draft of the chapter that was published.

 

This chapter explores the effect on visual communication design of the differences between what is observed (seen), how that is recorded (documented) and what is subsequently projected to viewers (designed).  Theorising of these differences form an established body of ethnographic knowledge yet the implications of such theory on visual communication practice has to date been inadequately explored. The problem for visual communication has been the difficulty of moving from the presentation of banal observations of the world-as-found to the conception and execution of design proposals. Little work has been undertaken to identify methods to overcome this problem. This research asks the question whether a method can be developed to assist visual communication designers to better communicate information gathered through observation? And further asks whether this method can overcome the propensity to classify as banal observations of the world-as-found? This paper will present preliminary work that begins to test, through visual communication design, the suitability of methods of observation drawn from phenomenological aspects of Visual Anthropology and Visual Sociology.

 

Roxburgh, M (2005) Seeing and Seeing Through the Crisis of the Artificial

in ‘DESIGNsystemEVOLUTION’ European Academy of Design Conference Proceedings, University of the Arts, Bremen.

 

This paper stems from initial doctoral research into the potential of observational research techniques for visual communication practice. The overall objective of this ongoing research is to explore appropriate forms of communication that can adequately represent disparate types of information and ideas, prevalent in dealing with complex design situations, to various participants. This paper should be seen then as a fragment of these overarching concerns and a continuum of my earlier and ongoing research interests and publications. As such I offer no definitive conclusions in this paper that, though more speculative than concrete, is laying the foundations for the later empirical aspects of my research project. Such speculation (hypothesis?) is so far based upon the typical mix of literature reviews, design teaching and design practice. Though I examine the potential of photo-based observation for visual communication practice in this paper, I go on to explore the implications of subjectivity in such an endeavour and finally speculate that visual communication design is potentially the most appropriate representational form for communicating complexity in design situations. In this sense I am not making an argument that designers don’t already use a range of visualisation techniques in their practice, rather that there is room for the further development and greater understanding of them and that, in visual communication design at least, such techniques are largely outcome focused and not research focused.

 

Roxburgh, M. & Kasunic, J. (2004) Looking for Limits in A World of Excess

in visual:design:scholarship, Vol 1, # 1, pp 1-14

 

Investigations into the role of theories and practices of observation and imaging is commonplace in a range of established intellectual endeavours. The potential of such investigations applied to photo-based image-making, in visual communication design, is significant, yet at this point, under realised. In this paper we advance the proposition that careful observation, in an iterative framework, is a necessary pre-condition for any intelligent and informed photo-imaging practice. We outline a curriculum approach that is premised on a process of research, concept development and project management, within a critical and iterative framework, using photo-observation as the key tool. In this scenario, photo-imaging is used to engage with the world and develop a knowledge of it that feeds into the development of the final outcome. In short, the (re)presentation or fashioning of the world— the central activity of design.

 

Roxburgh, M. (2003) Negotiating Design: Conversational Strategies Between Clients And Designers

in Form/Work, #6, October, pp 65-80

 

This article seeks to explore the social and negotiated nature of design practice through an analysis of conversations held between clients and designers working on visual communication projects. Of specific interest will be the way in which these conversational participants try to control the outcomes of these conversations through the strategies of rhetorical substitution and subject positioning. I will argue that by regulating access to conversational codes these participants seek to regulate the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in the decision making process in an attempt to legitimate their authority. Thus the design process can be seen as producing a material outcome as well as a set of social relations both of which are inherently ideological.

 

Roxburgh, M. & Bremner, C. (2001) Redoing Design: Comparing Anecdotes About Design

in International Journal of Art and Design Education, Vol 20, #1.

NB. This is the final pre-press draft of the paper that was published. Click here to access the final published paper.
 

In 1998 the School of Design (SoD), University of Western Sydney Nepean (UWSN) began running an offshore articulation program in graphic design in partnership with the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art, Singapore (NAFA). The successful completion of this one year program built upon students three year diploma studies and resulted in the awarding of a Bachelor of Arts (Design) from UWSN. Our primary focus in this article will be on the curriculum and pedagogical challenges that we faced in developing and implementing this course. The most significant aspect of this program was the relative freedom we had in moving away from the studio based anecdote of design learning that dominates many post secondary design programs and the implications this has more broadly for design education.

 

Roxburgh, M. & Bremner, C. (1999) The News From Nowhere

in Useful and Critical: The Position of Research in Design Conference Proceedings, University of Art and Design, Helsinki.

 

The concept of research for design has been characterised by the mimicry of borrowed research models for the practice of solving problems. Propositions for appropriate design research methodologies in general have drawn upon either 'the scientific' way or the field of sociology, without taking account of the epistemological implications of importing models for knowing the world. Add to this design's nostalgic attachment to the 'mystique' of creativity and one begins to realise that the intellectual pattern of design is riddled with paradoxes. In this article we will briefly critique this scenario and contest prevailing beliefs. We will then propose a model of research and of gaining knowledge from the world, through design, which reflects our experience that design practice is not only highly social and contingent, but also ideological.

 

Roxburgh, M. (1998) Arent You Wearing Death

in Metro Magazine, #115, pp 77-79.

 

Roxburgh, M. (1998) I Feel Like a Blokey ID or Two

in Metro Education, # 17, pp15-19.

 

Roxburgh, M. (1997) Clara Laws Floating Life and Australian Identity

in Metro Magazine, #110, pp 3-6.

 

 

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