Using triggers in a practice-led research methodology to challenge the conventions of communication design.

In this research, I am using an understanding of visual communication that holds that design is more than a spontaneous creative act – it can be studied and used as part of a research project that examines the design process itself . This project seeks to re-position design as a mode of questioning, with an emphasis on exploring the nature of communication design practice and how to extend it, rather than creating and reflecting on new design activities. The works explore assumptions about design and provokes a fresh consideration of communication design practice that will have operational significance. To appropriate words used to describe the work of the 2011 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Tomas Tranströmer, I was looking for a design approach that would ‘find a fresh way into reality’. As Faust states, ‘When we reframe design through a discourse, designing on a meta level, we are actually designing design, as we are giving design a different meaning, changing frame to include or exclude what we do or don’t consider as a part of the field’ (Faust 2010, p. 109). This highlights the potential of a design to reframe communication design and to broaden traditional boundaries to trigger a challenge to the conventions of communication design. This moves the conversation about sustainable design away from discussions of materials and message, and onto the underlying ideas of design culture and the frameworks that create received ideas about design norms. The research process helped me reimagine the role of both the designer and design audience. This kind of exploration is an underdeveloped area in sustainable design research. Sustainable design often fails to reference a wider consideration of the conceptual framework of communication design practice. Sustainable design needs to engage with the culture of consumption and its unsustainable demand for resources (Jackson 2009) and the social effects of communication design. The concepts of sustainable communication design practice are largely undeveloped, beyond minimising the environmental impact of communication design within a commercial context – for example, by using paper from a sustainable source, using soya-based inks, minimising the practice’s energy use and avoiding working for clients with environmentally unsound practices. Although these considerations are important, their scope is not broad enough to address or halt the damage being done to the world’s ecosystems (United Nations 2011, Jackson 2009). This research attempts to harness the full potential of communication designers to create social change through critical engagement with design practice.