Personalising the elements and principles of Graphic Design: an exploratory autoethnographic case study

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to determine in what ways my graphic design practice is impacted by my socio-cultural identity. The intention is to explain and theorise the creative dynamics at play in Graphic Design as a discipline, so that I can use this to trace how the culture of graphic design, learned through training, influences the designs that I conceptualise and produce. From this exploration, critical self-analysis strategies and lines of inquiry for graphic designers, are established. To achieve this, triangulated investigations are undertaken in the context of a graphic designer as an idiosyncratic enculturated person, within the domain and field of graphic design. The attention falls on the dynamics of creativity and the cultivation thereof within cultural subject formation processes. Triangulated explorations of identity formation and identity within a culture in itself are undertaken, along with investigations into the culture of graphic design. Autoethnography (AE) is employed as practice-led research methodology and tool to extract data from autobiographic investigations that can be used to analyse and interpret the creative outcomes that were produced for the study. The cultural elements and principles of graphic design and the cultural elements and principles of an idiosyncratic enculturated graphic designer are compared, that result in answers to the main objective of the research conducted. Background and motivations introduce interpretation and contextualisation (personalisation) of AE as practice-led research methodology and method within graphic design as a cultural practice. The introduction is followed by creative practice that involves the generation of graphic design creative outcomes and the writing of a condensed autobiography. An in-depth literature review then provides a theoretical framework that sketches the discipline of practitioner within a field of practice, where after the practice is analysed, critically reflected upon and then AE interpreted, using the developed theoretical framework. From this, a detailed self-analysis follows. The process leads to the development of a new knowledge base and model (framework) that can be used in further research possibilities across other disciplines and cultural identity selections for self-reflection. This “strategic cultural preference facilitator model” consists of seven macro self-analytical identity markers, drawing on Appiah’s (2018) categories of Country, Creed, Colour, Gender, Class, and Culture (to which is added Professional Development). This is extended into ten micro sub-selfanalytical identity markers, namely: (1) Patriotism; (2) Paternalism; (3) Patriarchy and (4) Power; (5) the Pastoral; (6) Pretence; (7) Protection; (8) Punishment; (9) Privilege; and (10) Process, which are employed as socio-cultural identity lines of inquiry. The modelling and analysis processes documented in the dissertation could be extremely useful in most fields of human interaction, such as social work, psychology training, communication theory and practice, and in virtually all domains where the notion of self-critique as practice is prevalent (and necessary).