Staff Profile:Professor Sue Walker

Name:

Professor Sue Walker

Job Title:

Professor

Responsibilities:

Professor Sue Walker served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and Faculty Director of Research from 2007 to 2011, having previously been Head of the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication and the School of Arts and Communication Design. She is a Fellow of the Design Research Society and a member of REF 2014 panel: History, Theory and Practice of Art and Design.

Areas of Interest:

My main research interests are in analysis and description of graphic language, in particular the relationship between prescription and practice in everyday documents, and in typographic design for children. Before becoming a full-time academic in 1999, I practiced as an information designer, and I continue to undertake research and consultancy in this area. I was a founding partner in Text Matters, an information design consultancy based in Reading.

My most recent research project has been Isotype revisited, funded by AHRC where I was co-investigator with Eric Kindel. I worked in particular on graphic explanation for children based on study of the children's books produced by the Isotype Institute in the 1940s and 1950s. I am continuing to work on Marie Neurath's role and influence as transformer with particular reference to these books; and am planning future work on Isotype and communicating information about health, especially TB and malaria.

I lead an AHRC Research network: Learning, Understanding and Communicating about Information Design (LUCID). This network is connected to one of the University's strategic research priorities, the Centre for Information Design Research, which expands the work of the Simplification Centre which I helped to establish in 2007.

I continue to work in the area of design for children's reading, both from an historical perspective developing and drawing on the Typographic Design for Children database, and also advising publishers and teachers about typographic issues.

Reading has many renowned collections and nationally-significant museums, and I am committed to supporting their use in teaching and learning and in research. I was a key contributor to the successful bid for the CETL in Applied Undergraduate Research Skills that resulted in significant capital funding for Typography so that its collections and archives could be re-housed and made more accessible for students through initiatives to promote hands-on learning.

I have played a key role in developing the University's brand and visual identity and am proud of the fact that Reading's brand and visual identity was an internal job, designed by a team of students and staff. It involved operational process management as well as the design and development of an overall approach, templates and guidelines, and has resulted in materials that suit particular audiences, whether students, parents, business or academics.

Research groups / Centres:

Publications:

'Typography for children's reading', Fonts in focus, 2011, 8, pp. 8-11 (with Myra Thiessen)

Isotype revisited. Il progetto sugli aspetti meno conosciuti di Isotype', Progetto

grafico, 2010, 18, pp. 48-57 (with Eric Kindel)

Isotype International picture language. 2010, curated and designed exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (with Eric Kindel and Christopher Burke)

'Letterforms for handwriting and reading: print script and sanserifs in early twentieth-century England', Typography Papers 7, 2007, London: Hyphen Press, pp. 81-114

(co-edited journal) Information Design Journal, vol. 15 2007

'Children's responses to line spacing in early reading books or 'Holes to tell you which line you're on', Visible Language, 2006, pp. 246-267 (with Linda Reynolds and Alison Duncan)

(co-edited journal) Information Design Journal, vol. 14 2006

The songs letters sing: typography and children's reading, Reading: National Centre for Language and Literacy, 2005 [24pp] ISBN 07049 98467

(co-edited journal) idj+dd (Information design journal + Document design):
volume 13, 2005

'The books that nobody sees: typography in children's reading books', Baseline, 2005, no. 48, pp. 25-32

Fabula: type design, originally a screen font for the Fabula project; 2004-5 redesigned for print for Collins publishers for their children's dictionary covers.

(co-edited journal) idj+dd (Information design journal + Document design)
volume 12, 2004

'"You can't see what the words say": word spacing and letter spacing in children's reading books', Journal of Research in Reading, 2004, vol.27, no.1, pp.87-98 (with L. Reynolds)

'The manners of the page: prescription and practice in the visual organisation of correspondence' Huntington Library Quarterly, 2003, vol.66, nos.3&4, pp.307-29

'Serifs, sans serifs and infant characters in children's reading books', Information Design Journal, 2002/3, vol.11, no.2/3, pp.106-22 (80% contribution; with L. Reynolds)

Typography and language in everyday life: prescriptions and practices Harlow: Longman Pearson Education, 2001 [xviii + 206pp] ISBN 0-582-35755-1