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Designing towards Multidimensionality

By Michelle Hays.

Published by Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal

Design plays an instrumental function in bridging understanding of the contents and context through visual, verbal, and interactive methods or experiences. Revealing vital connections and the interrelations of aspects within a theory, art, and design serves as a means to understand the significance of designing visual communication design artifacts that exhibit wholeness and multidimensionality. The interplay among process, materials, form, senses, text, imagery, visualization, and theory comprise the basis for developing multidimensional forms.

It is paramount that designers see how a theory can become practical and embodied within communication design forms. This paper explores how the design of an artifact, a book, encourages audience participation beyond a typical reading experience. The design requires the audience to engage with the form and parts to synthesize the meaning and message of the piece. As a vehicle to pique curiosity, stimulate engagement, and interaction on multiple levels, it provides a reader with different ways of understanding through verbal, visual, tactile, and hands-on methods. Each level presents a different representation or way of revealing the content. This is a vital point, designing with multiple representations to create multidimensionality within one form.

Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal, Volume 4, Issue 3, pp.383-396. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 2.472MB).

Michelle Hays

Assistant Professor, Communication Design, Austin, Texas, USA