Unit

School Of Communication, Design And Media

Design Issues: Graphic LiteraciesWestern Sydney University Unit Code: 100612.1

Discipline: GRAPHIC DESIGN STUDIES

Student Contribution Band: 105

Level: 2

Credit Points: 10

Prerequisite
10931 Design Issues 1: The Design(ed) World OR 100595 Understandings of Design AND 11080 Design Issues 2: Modernism and Postmodernism OR 100596 20th Century Design Histories

About this Unit
This unit has three parts. Firstly, it outlines the elements and composition of the graphic page - photography, type, illustration - and several theoretical approaches to 'reading' the page. Secondly, it familiarises students with the history of modernist graphics by re-visiting three schools/movements - constructivism, the Bauhaus and the Swiss School - in order to better understand the ways in which the principles of these schools have been broken, re-figured and/or deconstructed by post-1960s rebels like Weingart, Greiman, Brody, Carson and McCoy. Thirdly, it facilitates an understanding of the theoretical, technological and socio-cultural context of new directions in visual communication, which include post-structuralist enquiries into narrative and legibility, new media or post-book 'literacies', and the effects of globalisation on visual communication and information cultures.