Dear Tom Gleason,
I am very encouraged by your desire to push the thinking of design much
further, and I can relate to your desire to start a publication, especially
one that spans academic and not-so-academic approaches. The trouble is,
there are a number of new design theory publishing projects around at the
moment (e.g., Next Design or Keith Russell's New Media Poetics, or that
which I edit, Design Philosophy Papers). How many will survive? The problem
is being able to get a good flow of contributions of sufficient quality to
sustain regular publication, to say nothing of the sacrificial economics of
online (& offline)'serious' publishing. What I'd like to suggest instead is
approaching one of the existing publications (like ours, for example!)with
a proposal for a special issue. Or maybe you would consider contributing
paper(s)to forthcoming issues(we have just posted a range of new themes -
see 'coming issues' at www.desphilosophy.com). The latter invitation of
course extends to all on the PhD Design list. A number of people on this
list are already involved in DPP, as readers, writers and/or members of the
Editorial Advisory Board (though reference to DPP is becoming widespread,
I'm somewhat surprised that the actual material we publish doesn't figure
very much at all in the discussions on this list).
While obviously I'm committed to my own publication,I'm equally committed
to strengthening the development of a critical design culture. The more
general point is that supporting journals already there is more likely to
develop design thinking than the proliferation of many short-lived
publishing projects.
best regards,
Anne-Marie Willis, Editor, Design Philosophy Papers
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