Bonnie Cook – Design Musings

Throughout this week, i’m working on my concept map, outline, and thesis statement for Project B. It is my first time taking a limited literature review and translating it into a research paper and despite the fluid sense of transition between the two theoretically, i’m nervous about making sure that I do a good job to model my process in future limited literature reviews to research papers. As this unit’s second blog is open topic, I wanted to free write into my thesis for arguing my position on graphic design storytelling.

A quick revisit to my limited literature review thesis:

The goal of this paper is to explore the possibilities of and need for graphic design storytelling to be included in the process and thinking of all graphic design. There are already processes in place within similar disciplines that can give perspective to whether this method could work for graphic design specifically. The goal is also to look at the unanswered calls to begin to develop more meaning within design and address if there are any potential setbacks that could exist in developing design storytelling as a methodological practice.

What I want to argue is that it is beneficial to the graphic design field on many levels, for students to professionals that are already practicing in the field to adopt the storytelling element into their process and the “selling” of their work to a client. Reading Dubberly’s article about the various ideation processes that exist across disciplines has given me the idea to propose storytelling as an ideation process. The other, slightly older idea that I have been toying with is developing the storytelling element of graphic design as a theory and write about it in that way. Both would be practical developments beyond the argument itself, but the theory idea seems like it may need to be an idea that I revisit at a later date if I could actually instill the process first (as theories often follow practice).

The neatest part of this project following the limited literature review is redrawing my concept map. Because of the questions I am asking myself in the process of mapping it out, the directions are varying a bit. It makes me question whether it is because of the argumentative nature of the topic perspective or purely heuristic bias at work. Either way, it is proof that revisiting a concept (even if it is a beginning ideation) over and over through a longer process can serve a purpose.