This study examines the concept of visual plagiarism within a contemporary cultural context shaped by postmodern design theory and the digital information age, as a challenging concern for tertiary level graphic design education.

This paper does not condone plagiarism, however it asks design lecturers to reconsider taken-for-granted assumptions that students operate in an unambiguous environment of 'wrong' and 'right' when it comes to the concept of visual plagiarism. It seems that graphic design students find it increasingly difficult to navigating the grey areas between plagiarism, appropriation, homage, inspiration, 'referencing, coincidence and 'accident'.

This paper questions how we teach and practise within our various specialities without a holistic understanding of the self and our humanity.

The design process, like all creative activities, involves both rational aspects and other less easily-explicable non-rational aspects, such as the roles of intuition, imagination and personal insight. There are therefore different ways of knowing and learning involved in teaching design.

The practice and the teaching of Typography in South Africa has yet to undergo radical or substantive changes in light of the multiple shifts and developments in critical thinking that has taken place in Academia and contemporary visual practice in recent years. While contemporaneous thinking has “ forced a change “ in many disciplines in light of the Postmodern, Post Colonial and other “Post” posturing that challenge the dominance of Europe and the West as the centre, very little of the core imperatives of these schools of thought has found its way into the development and thinking around Typography in South Africa save a few seminal books and teachers.

The Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg has diverse departments ranging from Architecture, Fine Arts and Multimedia to five different design disciplines. After years of being housed in geographically dispersed locations the faculty has recently moved into one building, and is in the process of consolidating and rationalizing the teaching programmes. One area of rationalization has been identified as the theory programme, and we have been assigned the task of identifying theoretical material and drawing up a single teaching programme that most departments could subscribe to.

According to Megan Hughes (2006) the generation that educators of the 21st Century have to deal with is referred to as “Generation Y”. They represent the by-product of the previous generation, i.e. the “baby boomers”, who heralded a “surge of new inventions and improvements” (Hughes, 2006), allowing the next generation benefits of improved technology and a much easier life.

“The Y Generation doesn't like hard work, even when it's for its own benefit, and is very much in love with anything that's 'instant'. “(Hughes.2006)

Design educators often adopt teaching and learning methods of a traditional nature. These practices may no longer be effective in the fast-paced world of tomorrow.

Design thinking, a well known topic of discussion in the design discourse, offers exciting innovative possibilities when applied in other disciplines. This paper explores the potential of design thinking in the seemingly disparate discipline of Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS). OR/MS develops mathematical models for analysis based on quantitative logic as an answer to management or other real life problems. Design shares this concern with trying to improve current situations but approaches these problems differently, using ‘designerly ways of thinking’.

Full Title: The enhancement of the time, quality and strategic adequacy dimensions of product design processes: a doctoral study in its first stage

In Portugal the Product Design Processes display several inefficiencies that result on the bad performance of the products in general. Therefore I have initiated an investigation about design processes that hopefully will conduct to the development of a design methodology that will match design education practices with industrial ones.