Following a query in 2018 by the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) alumni office to establish in which industries or companies UJ alumni were predominantly employed, information was gathered by members of the department of Graphic Design and data accumulated on a large number of alumni from the Department of Graphic Design.

Design education has an integral association with engaging both critical and creative thinking. While the previous critical cross-field outcomes explicitly fostered both critical and creative development (SAQA 2000), the newer level descriptors (SAQA 2012) focus almost exclusively on critical thinking. This could be because critical and creative thinking are often regarded as synonymous. Authors like Macat International Limited (2017) support this understanding by including creative thinking as a component of critical thinking, while other authors differentiate between the two concepts.