Not an academic type: what do communication designers know about research?

Abstract

Communication designers, like all designers, operate in the generative yet problematic territory that exists between science and art. Their work is technical and instrumental, yet simultaneously imaginative, intuitive and creative. This is an activity of becoming through the poetics of the material. The relationship between the communication designer and client creates an intersubjective space in which new knowledge is both enabled through and accessed in materialised propositional artefacts. This knowledge is both experiential and tacit, formed in the interstices between designer and the other.How can the activity of communication design, and the knowledge it produces, find a place in academic research? How might research be undertaken, not only about design but also through design? Some aspects of design can be adequately analysed, described and optimised using the methods of scientific research. This paper argues however, that the aims of this particular research project—to better understand the intersubjective aspects of practice—suit ‘practice-led’ research; a method based on the practice of design rather than a scientific research method applied to design.This paper discusses a particular communication design case-study, and the observations and understandings it produced, in order to demonstrate how the practice of communication design can adequately and usefully be incorporated into academic research discourse; upholding the standards of academic rigour yet ensuring the rich complexity of design is not abandoned along the way. Communication design’s entry into the academic world is recent, especially at a research level. What can the academy offer communication design and what can communication design offer the academy?