Design Writing and Research

In the last few weeks, Prague College students from the BA (Hons) Graphic Design programme completed their theses on a topic chosen from the wide field of graphic communication. As part of the module 'Design Writing and Research', the students had one semester to deepen their knowledge about a personal interest and write a dissertation about it. The process involved comprehensive research, including preliminary work such as interviews and surveys.

The result is a collection of fascinating essays dealing with multiple aspects of the world of design and communication: photography, branding, typography, game design, fine art, film design and many more. One student for example focused on the role of sketching within the design process. Another analysed the importance of graphic design in movies.  Still others used their interest in fashion photography to form the basis of their dissertations.

To give you a better insight, I will explain a little about my own thesis. Whenever I search for a topic that I really want to delve into more deeply, I always return to the significance of typography, as every typeface has its own characteristics that can influence the reader’s impression of a written text. So I chose to write about Blackletter fonts, like the one shown below, that are associated with a lot of different meanings – both good and bad – in our present time. 

Here is an excerpt from my introduction:

"During my design education, I came across typography, which constitutes a main part of a graphic designer’s work. One of the most precise ways to communicate something is via words. Typography is the visualization of these words and can support the message enormously by it’s appearance. To better understand the impact of different typefaces on the reader, I studied the basic history of typography. During learning about different historical movements, I also discovered Blackletter. While a lot of people regard this kind of script as something from the past, I became more and more interested in Blackletter relating to our present time. It seems to be that we can not look at this kind of script without any connotations or even stereotypes. But keeping the broad background of Blackletter in mind, it would be unjustified if we let it disappear completely within contemporary design. The great variety of Blackletter forms also opens a lot of possibilities for graphic designers to create new typographical pieces, that stand out of current designs. So my aim of this thesis is to show that Blackletter fonts can be used to express contemporary issues and statements, detached from the font’s historical context."

The module 'Design Writing and Research' encouraged me and my fellow students to concentrate on a single topic that interested us, while gaining  deeper knowledge about this field. Even if it was sometimes a challenge, writing this thesis was a enriching experience.