Design begins with a conversation. What can creative knowledge sharing in other cultures teach us?
We will begin by listening to design conversations from different cultures. How they might be used to convey narratives, gain a collective understanding and education through non-binary methods, in order to open new ways of seeing the world of design. The aim of this course is to show students how the activity of ‘storytelling’ is an important communication design tool for many designers in making a connection with the societies and cultures they live and work in. This course will explore acts of visual storytelling across a broad range of media and cultural practices, including contemporary sub-cultures and Indigenous practices of a number of regions in the world. 

Strategies will include ways of shifting the gaze and moving away from normative ways of creating narratives, exploring new ways of communicating, and looking at many creative thought processes. We will look closely at a diverse range of aesthetics, enriching your understandings of design practice.

A variety of ways to tell a story or present information through forms that include drawing, painting, sewing, printing, collage and other forms of image-making will be part of your studio activities, along with collaborative work, discussions and small workshops. If you appreciate process, making, creating conceptual work, a little bit of writing, then this studio is for you!

Students will explore modes of communication in different cultures through traditional and non-traditional methods, as ways of seeing and knowing and examine how these diverse aesthetics may enrich design practice. At the end of the studio, you will have developed rich, unique and highly contemporary visual narratives. Working will be encouraged through making, crafting, discovering, understanding and imagining new stories. By the end of this studio you will be able to create and communicate with an increased knowledge of how to be experimental, innovative, and bring new ways of making to design briefs. You will visualise abstract concepts around concrete narratives. All this can be used to generate engaging design outcomes that will disrupt, delight and surprise.

Work will happen in a mix of analogue and digital mediums in 2D and 3D. Activities will include collage to bookmaking, printmaking and maquettes; from puppetry to papier-maché. Weekly studios will include a model of conversations or lectures, workshops, field visits and studio time. You will be encouraged to be independent, make lots of mistakes, have introspective discussions, provide feedback, and most importantly, work collaboratively with peers.

Brief 1: Thinker-Maker

Brief 2: Diversity musings/The storyteller’s box

Brief 3: SKO: Reflective pause-ibilities