Creative Design Practice Research Articles

Study of Cultural and Creative Design based on Narrative Design

Using narrative design method to combine campus culture for campus cultural and creative product design practice, based on the narrative research method, summarise its design key points and combine it with specific case studies to analyse, combine narrative design and campus cultural and creative products to prove the feasibility of the design practice. With the help of narrative design methodology for campus cultural and creative design, campus emotions are used to create emotional resonance with consumers, with narrative design as the entry point, campus culture as the theme, and campus cultural and creative products to express the final effect. Using narrative design as the theoretical basis and shape grammar as the design method to create cultural and creative products with campus culture will touch consumers' hearts, which will help them to be brought into the constructed narrative scenario, feel the narrative theme, and cause emotional resonance with consumers.

Material Practices in Transition: From Analogue to Digital in Teaching Textile and Fashion Design

The transition to digital design tools challenges the craftsmanship of textile and fashion designers as part of the product value chain, opening for reflection on how textile craftsmanship should be taught in education due to the current trend of digitalisation. By looking at new forms of craftsmanship, this research expands on the idea of teaching students transdisciplinary methods which connect analogue and digital tools within textile and fashion design education. Based on analysis of a number of case studies, we propose a framework of different strategies for teaching textile craftsmanship in the digital design age, with the aim of integrating textile-specific digital environments — which have been designed primarily to maximise the efficiency of industrial processes, rather than to enhance design development with regard to artistic expression — and non-textile digital tools on the basis that these are exploratory in nature and open to more creative design practices.

Soft Studio: Revaluing Post-Consumer Textile Waste through Creative Design Practice

In Australia, the rate of clothing consumption and disposal is high and increasing rapidly. New methods of approaching consumption and intervening in waste streams are needed to develop a more circular system. While the textile economy is global, a circular textile economy can start at a local level through webs of smaller economies. In line with a small-scale approach, we developed Soft Studio, an experimental design studio that re-values post-consumer textile waste through creative design practice. Beginning with just one bale of post-consumer textiles we applied a creative design process based on material experimentation to help us think through how discarded clothing could be re-valued. This paper reflects on the pilot of Soft Studio in 2022, outlining the emotional, aesthetic, and pragmatic challenges in recuperating the value of discarded clothing. We propose that small scale interventions such as Soft Studio can generate valuable insights into the issue of textile waste, facilitate new design practices and bring creative communities together to establish new circuits of social and economic value.

Exploring the Path of Art Empowering Rural Cultural and Creative Design Practice in Supporting Agricultural Practice

Exploring the Path of Art Empowering Rural Cultural and Creative Design Practice in Supporting Agricultural Practice

Unbinding architectural imagination: Wang Shu’s textual bricolage in theoretical writing and design

Architectural writing norms have been a subject of constant debate in recent decades. Architectural poststructuralists have often conceptualised writing as a form of virtual construction in the medium of words. Recent scholarship relating to innovative architectural writing questions the power relations inherent in the canonical forms of academic architectural writing. This article examines Pritzker prize-winning Chinese architect Wang Shu’s [王澍] doctoral thesis, ‘Fictionalising Cities’ [‘虚构城市’] (2000), and other related writings, focusing on their experimental forms, the critical intentions behind them, and the multiple resonances between Wang’s written and built works. This article begins by foregrounding the intentions behind Wang’s experimental writing approach, namely his rejection of the dualistic opposition between writing and building, as well as his critique of instrumentalism in architectural representation. Through a close reading of ‘Fictionalising Cities’, this article explicates the central influence of Roland Barthes’s understanding of text as a ‘tissue of quotations’ and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage in shaping Wang’s writing approaches and his design thinking. By comparing Wang’s written and built works, specifically the Ningbo History Museum [宁波美术馆] (2003–2008) and the Xiangshan Campus of the China Academy of Art, Phase II [杭州中国美术学院象山校区二期] (2003–2007), the article identifies Wang’s consistent critical sensitivity towards the power relations and implied linear temporality that pre-structure modes of architectural creation. By highlighting Wang’s case, this article also suggests how the critical concerns that drive innovative architectural writing can be expanded into creative design practice.

Cultural and Creative Design and Development of Rural Tourism from the Perspective of Rural Vitalization: Taking the Design of “Wulin Anecdote” as an Example

From the perspective of rural revitalization, this paper aimed at the cultural and creative design and development of rural tourism, redefined the regional culture of the Wulin Village and developed the integration of the traditional cultural resources and the modern cultural creativity, which also explored new ways of rural tourism cultural and creative design. Methods Through consulting the relevant materials and visiting the Wulin Village in the field, the author of this paper processed the information in images, conceived and formulated the mainframe, confirmed the design direction, unified the style, and completed the tourism cultural and creative design practice activities for the Wulin Village. Conclusion Taking the national strategy of “rural revitalization” as the general direction, based on the theme of the traditional Wulin Village in Quanzhou, and through the form of cultural creativity, the cultural values of the Wulin Village were reshaped and the intangible cultural resources were transformed into tangible cultural values so as to promote the public’s new understanding of the countryside and achieve the purpose of cultural transmission.

The origin and evolution of Stanford University’s design thinking: From product design to design thinking in innovation management

AbstractThis article outlines the origin and evolution of one of the most influential design thinking perspectives in the Innovation Management discourse. This study addresses two significant criticisms of design thinking, namely, theoretical grounding and construct clarity. It also illustrates how this humanistic and creative design practice transcended into a comprehensive Innovation Management approach, facilitating entrepreneurship and innovation. Our research analyzes the evolution of the design philosophy and practices developed at Stanford University from 1957 to 2005 through document analysis. We identified design qualities that have been consistent over the decades, providing further construct clarity and insights on managing Design‐driven Innovation. These design qualities elucidate design thinking as a cognitive process, creative practice, organizational routine, and design culture. They emphasize finding profound needs and problems and translate them into tangible designs, creating value for people. This design philosophy is deeply rooted in humanistic psychology theories, particularly on creativity and human values. Collaborations between psychologists, industrial researchers, and designers created this creative and human‐centered design approach, known today as design thinking. This value‐driven innovation offers a humanistic perspective on innovation theory and practice. It also offers an Innovation Management schema of design qualities essential for developing Design‐driven Innovation capabilities in organizations and educational institutions. We emphasize that developing a creative design culture in which people have the human values, abilities, and confidence to collaboratively identify continuous emerging problems and needs and contribute through tangible designs generates an era of innovation and is essentially innovation management.

DESIGNING IN COMPLEXITY: HOW SOLUTION CONJECTURES INFORM PROBLEM EXPLORATION

AbstractEngineering designers seek to explore ‘real’ problems that must be solved across design processes. This exploration might be challenging in complex problem situations. An effective way of encouraging design exploration is conjecture-based problem exploration—informing problem re-interpretation by potential solutions. However, little evidence indicated how this process unfolds, especially in complex problem situations. This study addresses this question by articulating the underlying cognitive mechanism of conjecture-based problem exploration. Situated in a creative design practice that tackles real-world, complex problem situations, we employ grounded theory to conduct qualitative coding of interview transcripts and documents elicited from ten multidisciplinary graduate students. We developed a three-phase process model to explain conjecture-based problem exploration: (1) triggering through analogizing, inspiring, evaluating, and questioning; (2) transitioning to problem space expansion; and (3) resulting in problem focus adjustment incrementally or radically. Our explanation contributes to design theory building and encourages engineering designers to embrace a dynamic view of design problems when addressing complexity.

Networks of digital manufacturing of face shields and the Covid-19: design, maker culture and social mobilization

This paper addresses the issue of the configuration of a network for the digital fabrication of personal protective equipment to fight the pandemic of COVID-19. The main aim is to highlight how creative and innovative design practices, based on digital fabrication, have contributed to combat the new coronavirus in Brazil, concerning the design, production and distribution of face shields. The paper is the result of both exploratory, descriptive and qualitative research. In addition to documentary data and revisiting design literature, this work sought to understand the network formation modus operandi for digital manufacture of face shields, based on examples carried out in every region of the country. In conclusion, it argued that these social mobilization networks are based on the assumptions of the maker culture and reveal the potential for an open, distributed and resilient design to face this contemporary and future crisis.

Together but Apart: Creating and Supporting Online Learning Communities in an Era of Distributed Studio Education

AbstractIt would seem that technological campuses of tomorrow have manifested in 2020 as an essential spontaneous response to a world event. This article examines the current crisis in physical art and design studio learning in higher education as a consequence of the COVID‐19 outbreak and the sector’s response to the fast‐track conversion of blended learning to a distributed model. Universities are focusing on virtual community building where group work, ‘crits’ and presentations are being carried out online. Moving assessment and engagement to online formats has consequences for practice‐based art and design courses: distributed learning changes how we teach and learn. This article discusses the implications of art and design studio education in a time of distributed learning. It considers the loss of control over a physically based, practical curriculum and the repercussions for students unable to perform to the depth and rigour required for creative art and design practice. Studio education is considered a signature pedagogy, and has a distinct set of guiding principles such as facilitating critical play, thinking and making, and a pedagogy of ambiguity. This article examines the successes and challenges of moving these pedagogical principles into distributed spaces to support student engagement, using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a research framework. The article also examines pedagogical strategies that support students to engage in physical forms of creative practice that enable them to connect their lived experience in a time of crisis.

Designing with Genes in Early Childhood: An exploratory user study of the tangible CRISPEE technology

Biodesign, a speculative and creative offshoot from the field of bioengineering, is an area of STEM that is growing in popularity in education settings, primarily because of its unique interdisciplinary lens that connects STEM disciplinary knowledge and creative design practices. Although this trend is currently limited to middle school, high school, and higher education, prior research suggests that children 5 years and older, may yield long-term gains from exploring developmentally-appropriate concepts from novel STEM fields. Although there is little research on educational technologies or resources to support young children’s curiosity and learning in this novel domain, some research suggests that young children may already be forming preconceptions about genetics and biology (e.g., from popular media). Tangible technologies, which provide children qualitatively new, developmentally appropriate ways to engage with ideas and techniques, have been shown to support children’s engagement with foundational ideas relevant to biodesign, including the engineering design process. By applying developmentally appropriate constraints to our technology development (e.g., through frameworks such as the Positive Technological Development), the research team developed and evaluated a novel tangible technology called CRISPEE to introduce young children to concepts of biology and engineering. This article describes an experimental pilot study to investigate (1) how young children interact with the CRISPEE technological prototype, and (2) what prior knowledge the average child might bring to an educational biodesign activity. Implications for ongoing technology development and developmentally appropriate learning goals are discussed.

Losing place: Urban Islands and the practices of unsettlement on Cockatoo Island

Contemporary architectural practice posits the City as an agglomeration of built fabric and its resultant spaces; congruent theories of place attempt to discern opportunities and create methodologies to engage with and inhabit this fabric. These theories of urbanism are reacting to a socio-economic culture that demands precision, rationality and above all clarity, producing a spatial realm increasingly branded, deracinated and politically circumscribed – clearly defined, delineated and described. Architectural pedagogy is often troubled because of its service to colonization: form serving image, function slaved to economics, space subsumed into spectacle. The City, though, is fluctuating, multifunctional and elusive – demanding a conceptual entanglement of impermanence and incompletion. To explore the gap between professional practice and intuitive inhabitation, the Urban Islands project was developed. Urban Islands is an independent intensive studio programme run for two weeks each July on Sydney’s Cockatoo Island. The studios are run by emerging architects selected from around the world, and engage master’s students from six different Australian universities, in an environment meant to unsettle, unmoor and ultimately, enlighten. Deliberately eschewing linear and hermetic modes of studio discourse and instruction, the programme instead adopts strategies of wandering and migration to create an immersive investigative environment. Urban Islands utilizes narrative, fiction and a hermeneutical approach to education to re-theorize the studio. Subsequent re-readings and misreadings of place offer its participants agency in determining their roles in that space, as well as allowing for new ways to both measure and mark the earth. This article outlines the constituent conceptual concerns informing the programme, illustrated by select examples of work that enmesh analytical theory and creative design practice to propose an expanded geography of the city, one of excisions and allegory and, most importantly, one wide open to interpretation.

Regional design

In recent decades the Netherlands has seen an increase in the use of regional design-led practices in national indicative planning. Despite this, the interrelations between design and planning decision making are not well understood and attempts to involve the expertise and ambition of designers in planning have had unclear outcomes. This paper elaborates on the role and position of regional design in indicative planning. It is argued that design in this realm resembles discretionary action, implying that design both influences, and is influenced by, prevailing planning rationales. An analytical framework is developed on these grounds and applied to a set of regional design initiatives that evolved in the context of Dutch national plans between 1988 and 2012. Significantly, the analysis reveals forms of discretional control that shape the creative design practice, of particular importance being the flexibility of planning guidance and the resulting room for interpretation. In theoretical terms, the article contributes to the discussion of how design – as an explorative search for solutions to problems in a particular spatial context – and design theory can contribute to an understanding of the multiple planning experiments emerging in this post-regulative era.

Exploration of the shape drawing tools in microsoft word for fostering idea development in the Ghanaian indigenous kente weaving industry

The advancement of computer technology for digital artistry in this 21st century has availed new-media technologies for enhancing design practices in technical and vocational studies through the development of sophisticated graphic-application software. Unfortunately, these software are very challenging to learn and employ for creative design practice especially at the Basic and Senior High School levels of education in Ghana. Microsoft Office word belongs to the category of general-purpose application software, developed principally for word processing. Unfortunately, many of its users are oblivious of its capabilities for creative motif and pattern designing. It is embedded with shape designing tools that can be manipulated and modified to create intricate patterns for advancing variety of design concepts. The researcher has explored these tools and adopted them for creating fascinating kente design concepts, based on the design-based research approach. This paper therefore presents a descriptive account of how to use angular and linear shapes in Microsoft Word to create motifs and patterns to develop ideas for kente designing that can be employed by Ghanaian indigenous kente designers to foster idea development to enhance their trade.Keywords: New-media technologies; graphic application software;microsoft office word; creative pattern designing; Ghanaian indigenous kente designers

The urban creative factory-creative ecosystems and (im)material design practices

Post-Fordism, with its evolution towards immaterial production in the areas of information, knowledge and affective, creative commerce, foregrounds design as a central, enabling activity. If this enablement finds particular application in cities of the Global North, it testifies to a shift in the geopolitical distribution of productive agency and application of international labour, one that sees industrial activities ‘reassigned’ to the Global South, leaving cities of the variably de-industrialised countries to develop cultural, symbolic, and creative economies.
 This paper examines the nature of urban place and the work regimes practised there consequent to these economies. It argues firstly for ‘cityness’ in these context to be understood as a creative urban factory – a place where older managerial and organisational techniques applied to factory environments in the service of high productivity are recalibrated and diffused across the entirety of urban territories. Secondly, the paper links the productivity of the creative urban factory with a biopolitical makeover of cities themselves, seeing in an optimisation of productive capacity a situation where the entirety of living labour is taken up and commoditised via the production of ever-customised lifestyles and identities. A raft of new identifying subject and worker categories emerge that exceed or elude the older class identifications, and with it, a certain potential to collectively counter the exploitation inherent post-Fordist work. While exploring the possibility of new identifying collectives – what Hardt and Negri have referred to as the multitude – the paper makes an argument for design itself to be a key medium for rethinking and re-enacting collective agency.
 As the harbinger of new forms of user participation and co-operative processes that are, by way of emerging technological tools, open, evolving, ad hoc, reflexive and customisable, design practice increasingly must contend and adapt to forms of de-professionalisation. Rather than seeing in this adaption a demise in profession position, the new possibilities appearing in design point to a low-tech, yet digitally-driven enabled, re-politicisation of design and creativity, one better able to contend with the strictures of the urban creative factory.

Regional design

In recent decades the Netherlands has seen an increase in the use of regional design-led practices in national indicative planning. Despite this, the interrelations between design and planning decision making are not well understood and attempts to involve the expertise and ambition of designers in planning have had unclear outcomes. This paper elaborates on the role and position of regional design in indicative planning. It is argued that design in this realm resembles discretionary action, implying that design both influences, and is influenced by, prevailing planning rationales. An analytical framework is developed on these grounds and applied to a set of regional design initiatives that evolved in the context of Dutch national plans between 1988 and 2012. Significantly, the analysis reveals forms of discretional control that shape the creative design practice, of particular importance being the flexibility of planning guidance and the resulting room for interpretation. In theoretical terms, the article contributes to the discussion of how design – as an explorative search for solutions to problems in a particular spatial context – and design theory can contribute to an understanding of the multiple planning experiments emerging in this post-regulative era.

Regional design

In recent decades the Netherlands has seen an increase in the use of regional design-led practices in national indicative planning. Despite this, the interrelations between design and planning decision making are not well understood and attempts to involve the expertise and ambition of designers in planning have had unclear outcomes. This paper elaborates on the role and position of regional design in indicative planning. It is argued that design in this realm resembles discretionary action, implying that design both influences, and is influenced by, prevailing planning rationales. An analytical framework is developed on these grounds and applied to a set of regional design initiatives that evolved in the context of Dutch national plans between 1988 and 2012. Significantly, the analysis reveals forms of discretional control that shape the creative design practice, of particular importance being the flexibility of planning guidance and the resulting room for interpretation. In theoretical terms, the article contributes to the discussion of how design – as an explorative search for solutions to problems in a particular spatial context – and design theory can contribute to an understanding of the multiple planning experiments emerging in this post-regulative era.

Laser Shibori: A Digital Moulding Technique Supporting Circular Textile Design in Three Dimensions

This paper considers the potential for digital laser technology to facilitate sustainable innovation in the field of textile design and manufacture, enabling transition towards a circular economy. Using recent design research as a case study, it discusses a newly developed Laser Shibori technique and its significance in relation to circularity. Laser Shibori describes a digital moulding technique for three-dimensional surface design and sustainable textile finishing that can be used to design accurate surface architectures for synthetic textiles. Using the photothermal energy of a CO2 laser, the method combines two heat dependent processes: heat setting and textile colouration, resulting in an effect akin to shibori. Unlike the traditional craft practice, Laser Shibori offers precise digital control, repeatability and a unique aesthetic. The study demonstrated the benefit of interdisciplinary research, synthesising design and science to support sustainable material innovation. The synthesis of material science and creative design practice proved essential in developing the laser technique and created a platform for material innovation beyond creativity as discussed through potential functional application ideas and sustainability benefits. The methods described in this paper provide a system to control three-dimensional effects through controlled tension and targeted laser irradiation. The use of laser technology to create three-dimensional textile forms presents processing advantages over traditional methods: the laser does not require physical moulds or complicated set up and offers ease of pattern change through digital generation of designs. The laser process negates requirement for additional materials, offering reversible surface design effects to facilitate ease of recovery at end of primary use, thus complimenting a circular textile lifecycle in three dimensions: through efficiency, agility and recovery.

Regional design: Discretionary approaches to regional planning in The Netherlands

In recent decades, The Netherlands has seen an increase in the use of regional design-led practices in national indicative planning. Despite this, the interrelations between design and planning decision making are not well understood, and attempts to involve the expertise and ambition of designers in planning have had unclear outcomes. This article elaborates on the role and position of regional design in indicative planning. It is argued that design in this realm resembles discretionary action, implying that design both influences, and is influenced by, prevailing planning rationales. An analytical framework is developed on these grounds and applied to a set of regional design initiatives that evolved in the context of Dutch national plans between 1988 and 2012. Significantly, the analysis reveals forms of discretional control that shape the creative design practice, of particular importance being the flexibility of planning guidance and the resulting room for interpretation. In theoretical terms, the article contributes to the discussion of how design – as an explorative search for solutions to problems in a particular spatial context – and design theory can contribute to an understanding of the multiple planning experiments emerging in this post-regulative era.

The Different Learning Outcomes of High School and College Students on a 3D-Printing STEAM Engineering Design Curriculum

To enable high school students, especially those interested in art and design-related careers, to improve their ability to integrate knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in their creative design practices and to be familiar with auto manufacturing, the development of a bridging curriculum, known as STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) using digital tools such as 3D printers, has been increasingly recognized as emergent and vital. As a bridging curriculum, it is essential to examine the curriculum with respect to high school and college students to highlight the differences in their knowledge and skills for improving curriculum development. Hence, we conducted a teaching experiment using a CO2-car engineering design curriculum in this study to analyze the learning outcomes of four groups of students (three 3D-printing groups: 108 high school students, 12 design college students, and 12 engineering college students; one handmade group: 36 high school students) to assess their competencies. The results of the present study highlight significant differences in creativity, forecast accuracy, race outcomes, and learning outcomes. Suggestions based on the results were generated to improve the curriculum. The findings in this study serve as a reference for the future design, development, and implementation of STEAM curricula.