Wanderland: Exploring Experimentation in Design Theory to Find New Ways of Working, Understanding and Interpreting Process and Outcomes

This paper examines experimentation in graphic design to understand how a designer might uncover new ways of working apart from the conventional solution-based approach in professional practice. Particular attention is focused on alternative design experimentation. The thesis opens up a debate about the relationship of process and professionalism in design practice.

In contemporary practice, designers learn to embrace the mistakes which occur during the design process. These mistakes or ‘failures’ have guided designers to definite solutions using effective and efficient strategies and techniques, and have also offered spaces for alternative approaches to emerge when a designer emphasizes his own creative purposes.

The paper proposes failure and an adaptation of ideas by feminist researcher and queer theorist Judith Halberstam, for designers to consider as a new approach to creative design that provides not only a new methodology, but also a new way of understanding how experimentation works.