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Rian Hughes is a graphic designer, illustrator, comic artist, writer and type designer who has worked extensively for the British and American advertising, music and comic book industries.\ud He has written and drawn comics for 2000AD and Batman: Black and White, and designed logos for The Avengers, The X-Men, Superman, record label Hedkandi, MTV and James Bond. He has edited books on mid-century lifestyle illustration and custom typography, and written on semiotics, culture, and collecting vintage science fiction pulps and paperbacks.

Who decides the direction of our cultural life – and who is excluded? That’s the question underpinning this research into diversity on the boards of Cornwall’s creative hubs. The death of George Floyd and the eruption of soul-searching provoked by #metoo led to much artistic and cultural activity. But to what extent has this renewed focus on diversity and inclusion been reflected among the decision-makers and budget-holders? Through analysis, a survey and interviews, this project examines this in the Cornish and national context. The report emphasises the ethical reasons and significant benefits of more diversity in leadership but also – perhaps more importantly - offers detailed advice for arts leaders on how to achieve it, including extensive signposting to resources.

Stephen Mallinder is regarded as one of the key influences on contemporary electronic and popular music culture. \ud \ud The group’s first release, Extended Play in 1978, represented the first domestic release for Rough Trade Records, the UK's foremost independent label, and was followed by the band contributing to A Factory Sampler, the debut release for the seminal British record label, Factory Records (Various Artists, 1978). The group went on to make over 30 albums for labels including Virgin and EMI, and has recently reissued a series of box sets though Mute Records, all to critical acclaim.\ud \ud Stephen has recorded and toured extensively in Europe, USA, Japan and Australia and continues to record and play, currently recording and touring as Wrangler, and with recent releases under the names Hey Rube and Kula, Cobby & Mallinder.\ud \ud He has collaborated with a host of artists and musicians including Afrika Bambaataa, Marshall Jefferson, Adrian Sherwood,has also worked with poet John Giorno and with William Burroughs at the Final Academy in the 1980s. He has also established a number of production companies, record and video labels including: Doublevision; Plastex; and Off World Sounds (Australia). His works have been performed at Tate Modern (Turbines) and the Barbican Centre.\ud \ud He has worked as extensively as a journalist and broadcaster covering both electronic music and popular culture, and as an academic who has published a number of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters. He holds a PhD in popular culture, and is currently at the University of Brighton teaching on various arts and humanities courses and managing projects in the arts. In addition he does key notes, panels and guest lectures at a number of universities in the UK and conferences around the world.

Machine learning is set to have a profound impact on the graphic design industry in the near future. Despite its proximity, graphic design education and practice are largely sidelined from participating in the highly scientized spheres of computational aesthetics and applied image processing. Within this context, the researchers sought to make visible some of the cultural and practical implications of AI-powered design, from a graphic design perspective. The resulting practice-led project, Michael Barnes, falls within the subfield of adversarial design, and seeks to provoke contestation and debate around automation in design. The following short paper briefly sketches out the current graphic design landscape in relation to emerging technologies; outlines Michael Barnes; and explores a number of issues raised by the project including questions around (inter alia) aesthetics, authorship, and representation.

Shadow characters appear in narratives throughout history and illustrated formats provide opportunities for rich interpretations of themes which shock, titillate and make us question our very nature as humans. Through analysis of two classic novels - Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and A Picture of Dorian Gray and through studies of visual interpretations of these, themes of evil and the duality of human nature are explored. The roles of both illustrator and writer ,in terms of representations of dark characters, is key to an understanding of and identification with the darker and less acceptable parts of ourselves – the parts that Carl Jung suggested that , through psychological repression ,we relegate to the unconscious. The illustrators of these stories brought these characters out from the shadows and into the light through rich and expressive visual representations .

Whilst the notion of Design Thinking is nothing new, the methodology, and its focus on innovation, has become increasingly popularised within Higher Education over the last decade. Along with related practices, including Service Design, Design for Social Change, Social Design, and Design for Social Innovation, Design Thinking advocates a strategic, human-centred approach to design which ostensibly provides a “tool to address some of [societies’] most pressing issues: alleviating poverty, providing better education, and improving basic health services for all human beings” (Sharma 2012:195). Using examples from the RSA Student Design Awards, this chapter examines various ideological and practical problems inherent within the methodology. These include Design Thinking’s proximity to neoliberal economic policy, and a concomitant emphasis on ‘social change’ through marketisation and responsibilisation; its injudicious borrowing of techniques associated with the social sciences; and concerns around positioning vulnerable communities as ‘opportunities’ for gaining creative or mercantile capital, under the mantle of effecting positive ‘social change’. The chapter concludes by sketching out a possible way forward for developing a more critical and situated form of the practice, to ensure that the current rhetorical hyperbolisation around Design Thinking as a panacea for our global crises is balanced with an understanding that it is not an inherently emancipatory practice, but rather, one that has the potential to do more harm than good.

designdice™ is a tool to help any creative process, encouraging lateral thought, idea generation and problem-solving. It has grown out of a deep belief in the value of encouraging creativity in others, and improves in application the more you use it.\ud \ud Created in-part in response to the significant shift in student demographic (particularly the decline of key craft & conceptual skills), the dice empower a student to ‘own’ their creative process more fully, engage in the ‘craft’ of thinking more practically (with lots of drawing & writing), and importantly make far more efficient use of their time.\ud \ud The presentation & subsequent workshop will allow colleagues to practically engage with the dice in a studio environment (as students would use them), and participate in an open discussion on some of the applications used successfully during its trials.

There are rumours that writing will cease, books will die, the digital eye will take over. Standing at the edge of this precipice we look away from these preoccupations. Instead we look back, investigating the act of writing through systematic consideration, attempting to disregard all preconceptions. This exposition focuses on the gestural and uses Vilém Flusser’s concept of ‘pseudo writing’, to analyse the interaction between the physical actions and the technologies of writing. \ud \ud The first act of Various Writings’ was a response to Vilém Flusser’s text The Gesture of Writing. This text radicalised our ideas on what constitutes research and thematised the conditions of sharing in ‘other’ terms. Flusser meticulously disassembles the act of writing. We follow in his footsteps, using personal mythologies, Oulipian constraints / translations, taxonomies and non-verbal conversations as implements to excavate relics of writing. We collect codes, tools, surfaces; test writing against various technologies and translate it into movements, attitudes and objects.

Catalogue essay for "Pabru Essays", Falmouth University, 2018.

An assessment of the life and influence on the development of printmaking in Ireland of the German printmaker and artist, Dietrich Blodau.

Central to any graphic design education is the teaching of a design (or creative) process as an aid to problem-solving. This study draws upon experimental workshops within design education, together with current thinking from the broader arts, emotional psychology and the brain sciences, to explore the idea of repositioning process as the ‘main event’ – rather than it being a means-to-an-end. The study sought to frame learning experiences that enabled students to consciously become the object of their own study; including themes that explored ‘personal identity’, ‘dualism’, ‘mind-wandering’ and ‘habit’ as mechanisms to enhance our creative capacity, and evidenced significant improvements in the students’ confidence, dexterity and working methodologies (including the elusive ‘risk’ and ‘play’). The emerging conclusions propose key anchors (‘dissociative creativity’, ‘process as the main event’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘immersion’) that we believe ought to be central to the development of any new teaching (esp. within graphic design).\ud \ud Keywords: Design, Education, Process, Creativity, Risk\ud \ud Full paper. Delivered 31 May 2017. Page 81–95 of attached document.

A publication and catalogue produced to accompany a year long ACE commission for The Burton Art Gallery & Museum, Bideford, UK.

RE-Thinking the Mystery of Glitch\ud \ud Over the last decade ‘glitch’ culture has emerged in art and music as creatives explore the possibilities of harnessing error in digital tools. By unpacking his own creative experimentation, Thomas Barwick demystifies the ‘magic’ of software to help us rethink materials and forge a creative discipline of error

This chapter was originally delivered as a paper at the First International Conference of Semiotics & Visual Communication at Cyprus University of Technology. \ud \ud It brings together theoretical, historical and practice-based research gathered through the course of 2011. In part it is a collection of ruminations, preoccupations, truths and tales examining the speech balloon, and its dear, yet distinct relative, the thought balloon. It also forms a brief commentary of the work produced during two artist residencies, completed by Lizzie Ridout at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, USA in late 2011 and early 2012.

An edited and designed article adapted from a series of informal meetings, emails, notes and a public conversation held between artist Lizzie Ridout and artist/writer/curator Maria Christoforidou. These formed part of Lizzie Ridout's exhibition 'Ways to Talk & Yet Say Nothing, or Ways to Not Talk & Yet Say Everything', bringing together a body of printed works, drawings and objects. Shown at Plymouth University in 2012, this exhibition coincided with the completion of a publication also called 'Ways to Talk & Yet Say Nothing, or Ways to Not Talk & Yet Say Everything'. The publication is the result of a collaboration with Women's Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY, USA.

'Ways to Talk & Yet Say Nothing, or Ways to Not Talk & Yet Say Everything' is a limited edition publication created in collaboration with the Women's Studio Workshop, New York, USA. It is a development of ideas created as part of a project called 'The Architecture of Conversation'.\ud \ud 'Ways to Talk & Yet Say Nothing, or Ways to Not Talk & Yet Say Everything' brings together a weaving of theory and practice exploring the history, symbolism and usage of the speech balloon. Various print techniques are utilised to examine how we speak.\ud \ud The book comprises a custom-made bound folio containing a set of nine prints, with inset letterpressed pamphlet.\ud \ud Hand-made and printed in an edition of 50, using silkscreen, letterpress, intaglio and laser-cut.

Spaces on bookshelves, the mathematical preferences of bees, Hiroshima survivors, time-travelling, Victorian novelists, incomplete gravestone inscriptions; all starting points to be pondered and to inspire, says Lizzie Ridout, in her endless search for beginnings.

Homeward Bound or An Exercise in Collecting Beginnings brings together research by the fourth Pearson Creative Research Fellow at the British Library, Lizzie Ridout, in 2007. \ud \ud Lizzie has been working as ‘domestic archaeologist’ within the collections, seeking out references to mundane objects with bizarre or poetic twists. Contained within this book are references to her intriguing finds. Beetle-\ud wing dresses, moustache cups, electric tablecloths and ghosts of stockings all make an appearance. Interspersed amongst original source material, Lizzie has included visual work documenting how this body of uncanny things has inspired her in her own practice. A new collection, somewhere on the cusp between what is real and what is imagined, is created.

The understanding of “Swiss design” as perhaps the purest form of modernism places Switzerland at the epicentre of twentieth century graphic design history. Post modern vehicles of thought as well as challenges to Western-centred design history, have left the success story of Swiss graphic design in tact. This paper examines the work and career of Swiss poster designer Paul Brühwiler, and through this critiques this concept of “Swissness”. It proposes that even where a positive national design stereotype is established, this is detrimental to design historical knowledge.

accepted for performed presentation to be be delivered at the Society of Artistic Research's 8th International Conference on Artistic Research. To be held at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland in April 2017. The presentation will form a three-way 'trialogue' between the collaborators (Christoforidou, Ridout, Star) on their collaborative research into understanding the act of writing.

Maria Christoforidou, Lizzie Ridout and Dion Star were invited to attend a residency at CAST, Helston, to explore their project 'Various Writings'.

Accepted abstract for 20 minute presentation at MIX2017, Bath Spa University, July 2017.

The purpose of this paper is to present two exceptional projects, SS Eternity and Bloom, from a module that is\ud part of an undergraduate Computer Games focused degree. Here teams have developed innovative solutions to\ud the themes they have been set. Both artists and programmers have applied their knowledge gained from previous\ud modules to produce work that has pushed their artistic skills and knowledge to new boundaries of outstanding\ud achievement.

This paper is presented through the research material generated from the exhibition Lost for Words exploring the themes of presence and absence in the artworks exhibited. The paper will take you on a virtual tour of the exhibition through which we will unravel a sense of loss each contains and within that the parallel experience of an unseen ‘presence’. The paper will take the form of a ‘conversation’ generated by particular artworks and how they relate to one another.