Neal Haslem

Dr Neal Haslem is a lecturer and researcher in the area of Communication Design within the School of Media and Communication.

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.

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.

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)

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

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.