Dr Neal Haslem

Research

Dr Neal Haslem is a communication designer, design educator and a practice-led researcher into communication design practice. His practice involves one-to-one relationships with people, enabling futures through communication design action. Neal’s practice-led design research focuses on investigating the practise of communication design as an intersubjective action. This research is informed by continental philosophy, situated in the phenomenological and ontological understandings of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Lévinas. Neal’s work contemplates the history of philosophy and its presence revealed through the underlying assumptions implicit within contemporary design worlds. His research is both informed by, and critical of, the work of Donald Schön and his positioning of ‘reflective practice’. Neal’s practice-led research continues to investigate the conjunction of communication design and intersubjective action through projects, writing, teaching and discourse. Ultimately he aims, through design research, education and discourse, to initiate an ‘intersubjective turn’ within communication design action and research.

Research Participation

• Homefullness

• Slow Media Symposium

• Design Futures Lab Research Group

• PPPPP
  

• DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Lab Melbourne
  

Supervision

• Janine Sisson, PhD candidate, Becoming sustainable through service design

• Stella Tan, PhD candidate, An investigation of expertise validation in graphic design management practice

Recent Achievements

2012   International Seed Funding: Homefullness project
2012  Finalist Homelessness Design Challenge, RMIT University Design Research Institute (with Dr Guy Johnson, Dr Keely Macarow, Dr Mick Douglas, Dr Helen Frichot, Rochus Hinkel, Margie McKay)

Neal teaches into the undergraduate and postgraduate programs both within Communication Design and in interdisciplinary studios within the School of Media and Communication. He is an active researcher within the Design Research Institute flagship ‘Mediated City’. His practice-led research investigates the intersubjective in communication design practice.

Key interests include:

• The intersubjective framing of communication design practice and its ramifications for practice, education and research
• Practice-led research in communication design
• Philosophy and ethics of Design

Neal is currently coordinating the development of the ‘Design Futures Lab’, a Mediated City project and an emerging research group within the School of Media and Communication.

• PhD Communication Design, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, 2011

• Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning, RMIT University, 2012

• Master of Design by Research (Communication Design), RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, 2007

• Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours (Graphic Design), University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, 1991

Design Education

• Lecturer, Communication Design, RMIT University, 2006–present

• Lecturer, Communication Design, Swinburne University of Technology, 2003–2010

• Visiting International Lecturer, School of Fine Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, 2008

• Lecturer, Visual Communication, Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania, Australia, 2007

• External Assessor, Research Masters presentations, Unitec University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand, 2006

• Lecturer, Communication Design, Swinburne School Behavioural Science (postgraduate diploma), 2003–2006

• Lecturer, Communication Design, Victoria University of Technology, 2003–2006

• Lecturer, Interactive Media, Victorian College of the Arts, 2001.

• Lecturer, Graphic Design, RMIT Tafe, 1999

Design Practice

• Neal Haslem Design, 2001-present.

• Designer, Melbourne Museum’s Planetarium at Scienceworks, 2004

• Senior Designer, The Ball Group Pty Ltd., Melbourne. 1998–2001

• Graphic Designer, Roar Film, Hobart, 1997–1998

• Graphic Designer, G3, Hobart, 1993–1996

• Graphic Designer, Clemenger Advertising, Hobart, Design for print and press. 1991–1992

• Graphic Designer, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Tasmanian Government, 1990

Current Memberships

• AGDA (Australian Graphic Design Association)

• AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)

• stArt Community Arts Incorporated

• DRS ( Design Research Society)

Professional work and projects

Include Me!
A website to help conference-organisers and self-advocates participate in meetings and conferences. Produced by AFDO (The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations) in partnership with Disability Resource Centre and The Helen McPherson Trust.

Te Toa Matoa 
A media and communications workshop to develop communication materials and skills in the organisation Te Toa Matoa, the Pacific island of Kiribati's peak disability organisation. Organised by AFDO (The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations) in partnership with AusAID.

Ride-on-dinner 
A mobile participatory performance experience that anyone can pedal. A slow meal journey served from pedal-powered vehicles over the duration of an easy early-evening cycle. A ride-on-dinner demonstrates simple pleasures in hospitality and local knowledge whilst feeling a link between human-scaled food and transport systems. Diners become co-creators riding relationships between individual human body, a temporarily collected social body and the body of the city.

Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis 
Identity design (website, stationery, publications) for a not-for-profit incorporated association dedicated to the practice, study and teaching of psychoanalysis, the training of analysts and research in the psychoanalytic field established by Sigmund Freud and extended by Jacques Lacan.

Patternbook 
Website design for Patternbook, part of Translation Exercises; a postgraduate project investigating language, text and textile practices by Ruth Hadlow.