The aim of this research is to investigate the mechanisms of creative design within the context of an evolving language through computational modelling. Computational Creativity is a subfield of Artificial Intelligence that focuses on modelling creative behaviours. Typically, research in Computational Creativity has treated language as a medium, e.g., poetry, rather than an active component of the creative process. Previous research studying the role of language in creative design has relied on interviewing human participants, limiting opportunities for computational modelling. This thesis explores the potential for language to play an active role in computational creativity by connecting computational models of the evolution of artificial languages and creative design processes. Multi-agent simulations based on the Domain-Individual-Field-Interaction framework are employed to evolve artificial languages with features that may support creative designing including ambiguity, incongruity, exaggeration and elaboration. The simulation process consists of three steps: (1) constructing representations associating topics, meanings and utterances; (2) structured communication of utterances and meanings through the playing of “language games”; and (3) evaluation of design briefs and works. The use of individual agents with different evaluation criteria, preferences and roles enriches the scope and diversity of the simulations. The results of the experiments conducted with artificial creative language systems demonstrate the expansion of design spaces by generating compositional utterances representing novel concepts among design agents using language features and weighted context free grammars. They can be used to computationally explore the roles of language in creative design, and possibly point to computational applications. Understanding the evolution of artificial languages may provide insights into human languages, especially those features that support creativity
