DOI: 10.47571/sanatyorum.1823582 ISSN: 2822-2865

Posthuman Graphic Design: Redefining Creativity from the Perspectives of Posthumanism and New Materialism

Fuat Boğaç Evren
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This study proposes the conceptual framework of "posthuman graphic design" by evaluating the deepening integration of artificial intelligence into graphic design processes through the theories of posthumanism and new materialism. Departing from human-centered approaches such as human-AI co-creation, the research conceptualizes creativity as a hybrid, distributed, and relational process shaped within the entangled interaction, expressed through Karen Barad's concept of "intra-action," of humans, algorithms, datasets, and digital infrastructures. Drawing on a systematic synthesis of foundational texts, such as Braidotti's posthumanist subject theory, Barad's agential realism, and Bennett's vibrant matter approach, and the epistemological inquiries of the graphic design discipline, this study advances a central argument. AI must be positioned not as an autonomous creative agent, but as an equal-status co-actor with distributed agency within the design network. Within this framework, the study demonstrates how processes of originality and aesthetic decision-making become hybridized, and how the designer identity undergoes transformation. In light of contemporary industrial examples such as the Nutella Unica, Coca-Cola "Create Real Magic," and Adobe Firefly–Mattel collaborations, a typological framework has been developed comprising the dimensions of distributed originality, hybrid aesthetic decision-making, and transformed designer role. This framework fundamentally questions the intellectual property assumption of a single creator; signals the risk of social biases embedded in datasets being transferred to design outputs; and reveals, in line with Braidotti's concept of becoming-machine, that designer autonomy transforms into a spectral structure. The study's limitations are the absence of empirical data in the conceptual analysis and the exclusion of thinkers such as Haraway and Deleuze from the scope. For future research, field studies, investigations into the effects of posthuman creativity in different design sub-disciplines, and legal-political ethical analyses are recommended. In conclusion, it is emphasized that the fundamental concepts of graphic design must be redefined according to a posthuman ontology; originality shifts from individual expression to distributed network processes, and aesthetic decision becomes the entangled interaction of computational intelligence and human intuition.

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