Here be dragons: students’ accounts of mapping graphic design and the expanded field

Graphic design is an increasingly heterogeneous and expanding field that extends from professional practice into areas of cultural production, social change and critical design. However, many graphic design students view professional practice as the edges of the subject. A previous study of graphic design students’ conceptions of the discipline (Corazzo 2015) identified a range of hierarchally situated conceptions from the: acquisition of design skills to the transformative potential of graphic design as a means to change. The study argued that only the more sophisticated view of the discipline would enable students to integrate ideas of graphic design and the expanded field. To address this challenge a project was introduced that asked a cohort of 103 second year undergraduate graphic design students to individually map graphic design practice as a means to develop a relational and situated understanding of its increasing heterogeneity. Drawing on interviews and observations, actor-network theory was used to trace how the intervention ‘performed’ by paying close attention to how the materiality of learning ‘translated’ students conceptions’ of graphic design. Despite some resistance at first, mapping became a means to understand graphic design as multiple overlapping fields of intentions rather than a single entity (governed by commerciality). An actor-network approach offers some useful descriptions on the role of materiality in design pedagogy and the ways this mobilized graphic design knowledge.