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Robert: I am sorry to treat graphic design and communication design as synonyms with no explanation. Switching between names reflects local issues at my institution and to a lesser extent in the USA. You are right, we worked for some decades to get graphic design to be the accepted term and applauded in the 1980-90's when it was included in the dictionary. But at that same time the advent of electronic communication in all its forms made graphic suggestive of print technology and therefore not applicable to a growing body of graphic design practice in the USA as most firms and other professionals shifted a significant portion of their work, in many cases the majority, to digital. It became clear if it was ever in doubt that graphic designers created communication objects in many media. NASAD, one of the largest accrediting bodies in the USA, in it's 2013-14 handbook on page 118 a colleague tells me, has changed the standard reference to communication design (I'll not capitalize out of respect for Ken Friedman's recent post on the subject). I don't cite this as definitive, but as suggestive of change. In 2009 we at the University of Cincinnati significantly revised our curriculum and also changed the name of our program from Graphic Design to Graphic Communication Design program (capitalization for proper names). At that same time we added three focus areas in later years of the 5 year program: Print, Interaction and Time-Based. These are limited in scope and within the broad graphic/visual communication education. We just this month introduced a proposal to AGAIN change the program name to Communication Design (dropping graphic) and change the names of the three focus areas to Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Motion Design. Believe me, in case Terry gets out his dictionary, we are aware that the word graphic means more than print. But for sake of brevity and with a desire to keep the end the focus, communication DESIGN seems to state the aim and suggests visual/graphic means. I am sorry for the long explanation, but I felt it might help others to see the things we are considering as the the name of our profession. We may be misguided but it has been the subject of some conversation as we seek to have our name match how we define what we do. We don't write specifications, we design communications. There is no similar change in view for the Industrial Design program. I guess they still design for industry. Best… Mike Zender University of Cincinnati Editor, Visible Language ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------