Abstract

This thesis is a study of the multiple stages of interpretation through which textual meanings take public cultural form. It takes the form of an ethnographic study and focuses on the structures and interpretive frameworks through which graphic designers work, and on the routines of practice they employ. Using observations collected over the course of an intensive week spent within a large design/branding studio, and transcripts from a later series of interviews conducted with graphic designers from other environments, I describe some of the key structural and social forces at work within this field of cultural production, and the effect of these forces on the practice of creative producers. The specific purpose of this study is to describe some of the working practices of graphic designers, and to discover how specific routines of practice reinforce conceptions of audience during the design process. While considering this central problematic, I address several sub-questions. While considering this central problematic, I addressed several sub questions. First, how do routines of practice impact the cultural productions of graphic designers? Second, how do graphic designers reference, and in referencing construct, their various audience groups? And third, how do designers use these projections/presumptions within their encoding practice?