Designers need to constantly revisit, rethinking and reconnect with design processes and not only focus on the design outcome.

Dr. Nurul Rahman have been practicing graphic design for the past fourteen years and a senior lecturer in Graphic and Design Communication in School of the Arts, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia. Currently since 2013, she is the Head of Graphic and Design Comm. Department and also leading the School’s design studio, U-Design Lab. Her practices involve connecting design with community and finding ways to implements and promotes design thinking in facilitating Malaysian ways of doing.

She completed her PhD at the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne and lived in Melbourne for 8 years while pursuing her Masters and PhD degree. Her experiences in teaching covers from diploma levels, undergraduates and postgraduates in the areas of design research and practices, research methods, and graphic design in Australia and Malaysia.

Her research interested in looking at popular print media, iconography, national and cultural identity, graphic design theory and practice, documenting and archiving, and corporate branding focusing on Malaysia as her case study. One of her first project in exploring the notion of national identity in relation to graphic design is an online forum project www.malaysianidentity.com conducted in 2006. Nurul is also an active Malaysian popular print collector. Her print artifacts collections includes magazines, advertisements, cartoons, posters, brochures and other ephemeral artifacts. She had presented and published paper (proceeding) about the online forum as a new research method, designer’s role in popular culture, media and communication, and gender issues in several international conference. Nurul also sings jazz in her other side of her life.

Photograph by Merideth O’shara