The Institutionalisation of Graphic Design: Investigating an Extended Contemporary Practice

Graphic design is an institutionalised discipline, afflicted by restrictive expectations of contemporary practice which operate under the guise of standards for “good design.” This thesis investigates the institutionalisation of the discipline, identifies restrictions institutionalisation places on contemporary practice, and explores the implications of “wilfully contradicting expectations”[1] in graphic design. Within this research, institutionalisation is defined as the establishment of norms within a discipline, especially as said norms relate to expectations of a discipline’s production. Such expectations of graphic design’s limits on practice include utility, beauty, financial restrictions, multiples or mass production, media, audience, and legibility. Expectations regarding each of these areas shape — and limit — thought within disciplinary discourse and contemporary practice. Drawing on methodologies from visual arts’ institutional critique, Umberto Eco’s The Open Work and Geoffrey Galt Harpham’s On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature, this thesis critiques the defined parameters of graphic design through investigative and experimental studio practices.

[1] 1. Jeffrey Keedy, “Graphic Design in the Postmodern Era,” Emigre, no. 47 (1998), https://www.emigre.com/Essays/Magazine/GraphicDesigninthePostmodernEra .