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The graphic design industry has moved beyond its traditional focus on printed matter to deliver multidimensional communication projects involving diverse audiences and media channels. No longer a skills and service industry, graphic design increasingly informs business strategy and innovation processes, requiring heterogeneous expertise, a rigorous design process and the ability to work in multidisciplinary teams. This shift raises the question of the relevance of a traditional design portfolio in demonstrating employability, especially when employers prioritise generic over disciplinary and technical skills. Our article reports the results of a survey of 53 Australian employers of graphic design graduates on the role of the portfolio in evidencing design-specific and more general employability skills, capacities and attributes. The article provides a deeper understanding of the role of a portfolio in the transition to work. We argue that graphic design graduates need 'portfolio literacy'-which combines insight in the curation of the portfolio and its use in interview performance-to demonstrate both core graphic design and creative skills and capacities in communication, collaboration and problem-solving. This significant know-how is best developed during graduates' tertiary studies.

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This article examines the deliberations and actions of a group of communication design educators in replacing discretionary grading in eight core units of a design course with a combination of pass/fail grading, rich formative feedback and a reinvigorated studio environment. The changes sought to better focus students on their creative process and improve their awareness of their acquisition of attributes, skills and knowledge along the path to becoming work-ready graduates. The traditional studio model of graphic design education approaches student learning through immersion in practice, imagining novice designers absorbing abilities and dispositions through experimentation and proximity to discipline experts and peers. If this model ever truly operated in Australia’s design schools, it has been eviscerated by the massification, marketization and rationalization of tertiary education since the early 1990s. Australian design education now operates with significantly reduced contact hours, tightly scheduled classes and standardized administrative, classroom and assessment practices that do not effectively model professional practice and limit students’ development of creative confidence. Another barrier to fostering students’ design acumen is their frequent fixation on grades as markers of success. We looked to removing grades to revitalize students’ flagging creative ambitions within the constraints of a tertiary education system we could not change. In stressing that a move to pass/fail grading is not an action to be taken lightly, we discuss our research into its advantages and disadvantages, the integral reconceptualization of learning and teaching approaches required to make the change and the challenges in implementation. This included understanding how students and staff interacted in the studio, their emotional and philosophical attachment to graded assessment, the effort required to communicate the changes to staff and students and developing resources to combat the fragmentation of the educational experience, which risks stripping change of its meaning and purpose.

Professional learning, where students gain skills and attributes relevant to their future work, is currently emphasised in tertiary education. Group work is promoted here for preparing students to work with clients and colleagues. We report on two capstone projects undertaken for external clients by teams of design students. In discussing the curricula and pedagogy of professional design education, the chapter addresses the value of group projects in developing graduates' work-readiness and insight into professional practice. Variances in approach, knowledge and perspective between colleagues, combined with differing needs and expectations across the designer-client-end-user divide, make goal setting and project resolution challenging in design. Project work approached from an expanded sense of the group and which delivers implementable proposals for clients provides graduating students with authentic learning around the demands of practice, stressing collaborative problem-solving based on knowledge of the design context and the wider relational systems surrounding industry practice.