Visible Language

There is a closed cycle of design education that replicates the most common design practice — and feeds into that practice that seeks awards based on incremental change supported by professional organization and trade journals — that feeds back to education forms for imitation. This is the educational failure this paper cites. It takes to task the stagnant, homeostatic educational institutions that fail to transcend the traditional guild system and sustains an anti-intellectual view of design and its future. Exposing historical roots of the situation, the author calls for design education to embrace preparation of students for the knowledge society and take a leadership position in design’s future.

The following paper assesses the roles played by semiotics in graphic design and in graphic design education, which both reflects and shapes practice. It identifies a series of factors; graphic design education methods and culture; semiotic theories themselves and their application to graphic design; the two wings of Peircian semiotics and Saussurian semiology and their incompatibilities; semiology’s linguocentrism, its affinity to cultural criticism and its seminal role in cultural and social anthropology, structuralism, poststructuralism and deconstruction. It examines the uses and criticisms of semiotics and semiology in design, their use in graphic design education, and their operationalization within technical communication and human factors as paths that might be applied to graphic design.

An area of visual communication that might be classified as a ‘design failure’ is the visual presentation of information about ‘prescription-only medicines’ for patients. This information is provided on packaging, leaflets, brochures, labels and websites. The practical issue is that there are problems in convincing patients to take medicines appropriately and effectively. Some of the assumptions that underlie the development of visual information for patients could be incorrect. A visual rhetoric framework is applied to help this article answer two questions: Is the current visual information about medicines a ‘communication failure’ and can visual rhetoric be used as a framework to indicate failures? The results show that visual rhetoric can be used as a basis for describing communication failures, but it needs to be incorporated into a larger ‘visual argument’ structure. ‘Visual rhetoric’ should be augmented by ‘visual dialectic’ (dialogues between commissioner and designer, and interactions between patient and artifact) and ‘visual logic’ (fundamental visual relations). The analysis indicates that visual information about prescription-only medicines for patients is — in general – not optimal and can therefore be seen as a failure. Application of some of the visual rhetorical principles indicates possible ways forward.

This study examines patterns of system failure (communication, typographic, material, economic, maintenance) and the resulting workarounds in signs that are intended to communicate frequently changing information in the built environment. The observed failures and workarounds in the communication of ephemeral data and the accompanying narratives in the everyday or vernacular expose a need for designers to expand their practice beyond the design of individual client-driven solutions to engage more fully in the design and distribution of open-ended systems and default templates that are affordable, accessible and successfully accommodate customization and ongoing change. Control of the scale, design and content of changing messages rests in ongoing negotiations with local zoning boards and more specifically in a revised relationship between designers and message senders in the context of evolving digital technologies and practices that offer message senders increased control over content appearance and display. The templates and defaults used in the everyday communication of frequently changing information are often driven by decisions made by sign manufacturers and programmers, resulting in communications that are built upon conventions that are often unexamined by message senders, who chose methods from a limited selection of manufactured options and increasingly enact template driven message sequences displayed on digital screens.

Nakheel, a Dubai World Company has created the world’s largest themed mall based on the narrative of Ibn Battuta, a 14th century Muslim explorer whose world travels are well documented. The Ibn Battuta Mall is located in the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and utilizes a communication strategy called edutainment: a neo-logistic portmanteau whose goals are to educate and entertain an audience. Through the use of diffusion theory and its five innovation attributes, this paper recognizes that the architects and designers of the Ibn Battuta Mall have placed edutainment goals into the context of a mall expressing a predominantly Arab and Muslim identity. This paper argues that the mall has failed to achieve many of its educational goals and has replaced historical fact and authenticity in favor of expressing a message of opulence and social prestige, which defines the mall as a place of commerce rather than a stimulating learning environment.

In closing, the guest editors of this Visible Language special series reflect on the failures identified in the various papers and interpret what this suggests for design education and research in the context of changing practice. The failures cited in this series point out the fractures in our understanding and practices from user-centered, digital, process-oriented, cultural, ethical and even safety-oriented perspectives. Three common themes are explored as context: theory, ethics and process. The need to update design education and identify research needs are discussed based on what the papers in this series suggest.