Reshaping perceptions

This poster reflects on three years of collaborative projects between graphic design students that deal with issues of sustainability and social responsibility in professional practice. Staff and students from the University of Western Sydney, RMIT University, The University of South Australia and the Wanganui School of Design have participated in this body of work. The aim of this project was to ask students to critically evaluate what role graphic design plays in the real world. Students were asked to develop an informed opinion of how they would facilitate ethical practice within the design profession. The project used collaboration as a vehicle to engage students in a critique of social responsibility and personal accountability. The effectiveness of these collaborations is a testament to how design education can better prepare students for the industry and how students can be more aware of the benefit of understanding their own position, moral code, ethics and standards. The project brief comprises three interrelated phases, designed outcomes and real world interactions which progressive build on its core aims and further reshape and deepen student understandings of its embedded concepts and perceptions of socially responsible design practice. It takes the form of a design manifesto, poster design, exhibition and zine. Annually, UWS students travel down to and exhibit their posters at RMIT University, participate and attend the agIdeas design conference and enter the NewStar competition. As part of the 2008 project, a number of student’s works were included in the New Views 2 international design conference exhibition at the London College of Communication. The final stage of the project culminates with the annual Museum of Contemporary Art Zine fair. It provides the students with an opportunity to extend and exhibit their creative work as part of the agIdeas experience through the design and promotion of a zine that further explores these issues and exposes their ideas to the general public. This poster uses these findings as a basis to propose a pedagogy that uses a WIL environment to instill the long-term retention of social design principles, and the meaningful practice of socially responsible design in graduates of graphic design degrees. The research presented in this poster has the potential to inform present and future curriculum design in higher education institutions that deliver graphic design degrees and wish to produce graduates who are capable of participating in communication for social change in ‘the real world’.