aking Conflict Visible
Visual Communication Design as a Critical, Pedagogical, and Political Practice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.82068/pgjournal.2026.23.42.11Keywords:
Collective Mapping, Critical Cartography, Transformative Learning, Design Literacy, Transdisciplinary TeachingAbstract
This article investigates the potential of visual communication design as a critical, pedagogical, and political practice. It outlines a theoretical framework that conceptualizes design as an agonistic and reflexive practice aimed at making visible the tensions and conflicts that structure the public sphere. The research is developed through a design-based experiment conducted within the Critical and Collective Mapping workshop at the University of Padua. The experience, which involved geography students, demonstrates how the use of specific design devices — graphic tools intended to facilitate dialogue and collective design — can activate processes of transformative learning and foster the development of critical design literacy. Drawing on qualitative and autoethnographic methods, the study shows how collective mapping practices and the associated graphic design processes can function as forms of critical reappropriation of lived space.
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