Despite an improved showing for Art and Design in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, the 2014 overview report noted ‘while there were high-quality exceptions, the intellectual and theoretical underpinning of graphic and communication design was thought to be generically weak’1. The field was reported to show little if any, signs of improvement since the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. During the same period, graphic design continued to be the most popular Art & Design undergraduate discipline. A UCAS course search for ‘graphic design’ returned 151 courses in the UK for the academic year 2016/17 and the various programmes, often titled in slightly different ways continue to be a popular student choice.

These provocative comments provide the impetus for this session, which reports on a project designed to data mine and map graphic design outputs from REF2014 main panel D sub panel UoA 34. The intention has been to identify the research themes and types of outputs submitted by the graphic design community. Preliminary findings from the data mining process will be shared and form starting points for a wider discussion about a community response to what is clearly an unsatisfactory research performance (in REF terms). The session hopes to engender further analysis and debate from the graphic design education community about where graphic design research is happening, what are the weaknesses, and how this narrative of negativity might be addressed. Together, participants in this forum will explore how graphic design research can be fostered and strengthened. This project has been supported by the Graphic Design Educators’ Network (GDEN) and the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD).

1. REF 2014 Panel overview reports UOA 34 Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory p.85