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Dear All, This fascinating topic brings me back... I had just presented a mini-lecture about my research to a group of students and faculty at a highly-regarded Ohio institution—it was a study about emotion responses to varying typeface designs. The research was conducted using quantitative methods and had been published in *Visible Language Journal*. My study concluded that people agreed about the emotions stirred by a specific typeface. After my presentation, the Dean of the school angrily challenged, “How can you tell our students this?—It’s all about *context*!” I was taken aback. It was the first time anyone had ever challenged my research. I replied that in my presentation I had said the results would be different under different circumstances or cultures. He was not satisfied with my answer and I was bewildered at his anger. The circumstance illustrates the current discussion. Some years ago Ann Marie Barry published a theory of visual communication. Her work begins with the brain, and so did my own inquiry. Our eyes gather light signals and the brain interprets, recognizes, and stores the images. The brain can “magically” make connections among emotions, sensorial and physical responses, logical conclusions, and so on, and thus the artist “imagines.” I don’t think any of this is controversial, yet having been reared through an art school and having spent some ten years teaching in them, I can say with some confidence that artists do not want the imagination quantified (perhaps thus my colleague’s visceral response). The mystique of innovation and artistic creativity is a powerful force—it is all that separates artists and designers from skills that can now be replicated by machinery (I note the Facebook announcement that Photoshop will now “draw” me a picture from any photograph.). People are fascinated by creative types, and to say that there may be a science that underpins creativity is plainly blasphemous. To return to the subject at hand, research in the field of design ought to be multi-directional. We need basic science to tell us how the brain and the eyes function and to establish the primary components of visual language upon which we all depend in order to communicate. In other words, design needs to establish foundations (not only in vision). We also need theory and philosophy, study of design processes, methods, and systems. And we need aesthetics to help describe the current state of culture. Practice is not all there is to design, for that would ground all of our thinking in form, function, communication, audience, and enterprise. Academia is the only enterprise where basic research, theory, and philosophy is conceived. How then can academia organize the knowledge we have already established and begin to identify opportunities for new inquiry? Dr. Beth E. Koch Adjunct Marshall University Huntington, WV ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------