How expert designers foster expertise: a study of professional visual communication practice

While design expertise has been widely studied across domains such as industrial design, engineering and architecture, visual communication design has received limited attention. Earlier research examined novice designers’ development of reflective capability, and its link to expertise progression. This study extends that work by investigating how expertise manifests and is fostered among experienced designers within visual communication design practice. Through in-depth interviews with five experienced designers (20–35 years’ industry experience), this qualitative case study employed thematic analysis grounded in Schön’s reflective-practice theory and Lawson and Dorst’s (2013) design-expertise model. This approach enabled close examination of how reflective processes, mentoring structures and studio cultures shape expertise development within professional contexts. Findings revealed characteristics associated with advanced levels of expertise, including progression from technical to strategic thinking, cultivation of collaborative studio cultures, structured reflection practices and interdisciplinary knowledge integration. The analysis identified tensions between participants’ stated values and the structural realities of practice, such as hidden hierarchies, selective mentoring and the influence of privilege on expertise trajectories. The study extends existing expertise frameworks by linking reflective processes and collaborative practices with the structural conditions of work, providing a basis for understanding how expertise develops and is sustained in visual communication design practice. This basis highlights the need to investigate how technological change is reshaping learning pathways and the strategies through which expertise will be developed and sustained within AI-integrated design practices.