Form/Inform: an analysis of design work to examine the trajectory from graphic design education to professional practice. 8 designed artefacts

Exhibition at the Goldstein museum of Design, University of Minnesota, 28th September 2003 –4th January 2004. 8 designed artefacts, 2003. The theme of the exhibition was to delineate and comment on the trajectory from education to professional practice. The researcher’s contribution was to demonstrate a reverse movement between professional practice and ‘the academy’ rather than to conform to the prevailing idea that education and training ‘led to’ professional practice. Therefore professional practices and its disciplines led to research within the academy. The event offered the researcher an especially useful platform to display work and discuss it in an academic forae. Practical experience in formulating design research methodologies had led the researcher to instigate a generative, detailed and structured programme of investigations in to the nature of the written word, resulting in a wide range of typographic experiments. Eight of these were shown focusing respectively on character frequency in the English language, alphabetic form study based on English language frequency analysis, alphabetic character structure analysis, alphabetic character stroke taxonomic analysis, 2 alphabetic character symmetry analyses, 2 generative glyph systems. In addition the logo and corporate identity for iE (a British technology company) were exhibited. Reproductions of some of the works and a short essay appear in the catalogue, ISBN: 0-939719-14-2. This exhibition displayed the design work of ten invited participants including the researcher. In addition 11 juried contributions were also featured