I would like to thank Marloes de Valk, Aymeric Mansoux and Steve Rushton for their writing support. The body of tutors at the Piet Zwart Institute, Master in Media Design and Communications for feedback and project development. Open Source Publishing for their energy, welcome and flexibility. Finally, my family and …

• DiSalvo Carl, 2012. Adversarial design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• Galloway R. Alexander, 2012. The interface effect. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

• McCullough Malcolm, 1996. Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• Morozov Evgeny, 2013. To Save Everything Click Here. London, UK: Penguin books.

• Sennett Richard, 2008. The Craftsman …

References:

• Apple Inc, 2017. macOS Human Interface Guidelines. [online] Available at: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/DesignPrinciples.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000957-CH18-SW1 [accessed February 2017].

• Briz Nick, 2016. The Browser: how it became the artist's modern canvas. [video online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com …

The questions that drove this thesis have been addressed from my personal experience. I feel very strongly about my field becoming functional utility because I believe in the power of a visually shaped message. It confuses me that the majority of the graphic design I observe in the public, executed …

The user, the learning curve

I find myself stuck between the effects of solution providing software and interfaces: I identify primarily as an end user of software, but graphic design has lead me to web design, and with it, web development, so I now also identify with the second category …

I absolutely believe that imagination is stimulated by technical understanding (McCullough, 1996), so we need for engineers to be more legible in their proceedings. When I say that I must take on attitudes of a traditional crafts-person, I mean that I need to take interest in all the ebbs and …

Traditional craft

I begin with craft because it is how I think of graphic design. It was, before the accessibility of personal computers, a craft that was manual, and was understood as so in that time. I'm calling traditional crafts the ones that were done with by hand, with hand …

This thesis speaks of modern graphic design. It is written from a personal perspective on the field, and on how I think it is understood. I feel like graphic design has become to be understood as purely utilitarian. A decorative function of communication. With this text, I follow an intuition …

Colm O'Neill

student number: 0901273

Thesis submitted to: the Department of Media Design and Communication,
Piet Zwart Institute,
Willem de Kooning Academy.

In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Media Design (49114):

Adviser: Marloes de Valk, Second Reader: Aymeric …