Dear Dori

Yes, this flickr site is a wonderful resource but I was a bit 
disappointed since many images were very low in resolution and I could 
not read some of the texts that appear on the images. I am indeed 
pleased to hear that you are taking up a course together with Hugh 
Dubberly who is a master at these image representations and on his 
website I did find a great resource that mapped all the major Design 
Methods in the form of diagrams and supporting texts that would have 
otherwise taken a few thousand pages to get across in an educational 
situation. I did share this fantastic resource and also wrote to Hugh 
Dubberly congratulating him for this huge contribution. These can be 
found at this link below:
<http://www.dubberly.com/articles>

The pdf file of the book "How do you Design" can be downloaded from this 
page below:
<http://www.dubberly.com/articles/how-do-you-design.html>
or directly from this link here:
<http://www.dubberly.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/ddo_designprocess.pdf>

This offering by Hugh Dubberly can grow to include other offerings, 
particularly the thesis by Chris Heape that deals with a new 
understanding of how to teach the fairly convoluted processes that we 
call design as well as the higher order understanding that is 
represented by the book "The Design Way" by Harold Nelson and Eric 
Stolterman and a simple visual representation of these newer offerings 
would go a long way to get design teachers around the world better 
aligned to these new ways of understanding design. I did share my own 
model of the Design Journey which is available for download from my 
website at this link below:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/FileSharing83.html>
or directly as a pdf file from this link here below:
<http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/Design_Journey_Think_Report.pdf.pdf-zip.zip?a=downloadFile&user=ranjanmp&path=/Public/Design%20Journey_Think_Report.pdf>
or here as a shorter URL a 275 kb pdf file.
<http://tinyurl.com/3kanf7>

I have got  a great little book called "Introducing Anthropology" by 
Merryl Wyn Davies and illustrated by Piero and published by Icon Books 
as part of a series of illustrated books on various themes including 
Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology which I find very useful as accessible 
material for design students. (ISBN 1 84046 663 4)

However talking about design in simple understandable terms is a fine 
art which mane resources still miss altogether and here the book by 
Norman Potter, "What is a Designer: things, places, messages" stands out 
from all the offerings that occupy this space over the past thirty years 
or so. published by Hyphen Press, London revised and extended fourth 
edition is an improvement on the classic first edition offered by Studio 
Vista in 1969, a great or should I say an alltime great introduction to 
the complex field of design!! (ISBN 0-907259-16-2)

I look forward to more such resources on the web about design and 
anthropology which can be used by our students and many others who need 
to understand design in the context of emerging needs and the huge 
opportunity that this would unfold in the days ahead.

With warm regards

M P Ranjan
from my office at NID
24 August 2008 at 6.30 pm IST

-------------------------------------------------------------

Prof M P Ranjan
Faculty of Design
Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID)
Chairman, GeoVisualisation Task Group (DST, Govt. of India) (2006-2008)
National Institute of Design
Paldi
Ahmedabad 380 007 India

Tel: (off) 91 79 26623692 ext 1090
Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054
Fax: 91 79 26605242

email: [log in to unmask]
web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp
web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in
blog: <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com>
education blog: <http://www.design-concepts-and-concerns.blogspot.com>
education blog: http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com

------------------------------------------------------------




Tunstall, Elizabeth wrote:
> Got this off of Design Observer, but John Curran has posted a list of the
> greatest hits of anthropological and social theory diagrams on Flickr.
> http://www.flickr.com/groups/great_diagrams_in_anthropological_theory/pool/
>
> This makes me happy for two reasons. First, I have always bristled at the
> notion that anthropologists are more textually-oriented than visual, that
> somehow there is no culture of the visual in the field. Having misspent my
> youth trying to figure out the subtleties of kinship diagrams, mastering
> the art of reading archaeological site maps, and illustrating the distinct
> morphology of early hominids (pre-humans), I knew that to be empirically
> untrue. So I am happy to have the vindication through visual documentation
> that Anthropology has always been visual.
>
> Two, I am co-holding with the diagram-master himself, Hugh Dubberly a
> workshop at the American Anthropological Association Meetings in San
> Francisco as part of the NAPA Design and Anthropology Special Interest
> Group. Proud (as opposed to shameless) plug (because I am really excited
> that this collaboration is happening, especially if I get to keep the
> posters):
>
> TITLE OF EVENT: Workshop: Designing Anthropological "Boundary Objects":
> how-to compellingly and effectively visualize anthropological data for
> heterogeneous audiences
>
> SPONSOR: National Association for the Practice of Anthropology
> DATE SCHEDULED: 11/21/2008
> TIME: 10:00:00AM - 12:00:00PM
> ROOM: Union Square 18
>
> So the next time a designer colleague of mine accuses me of being too
> textual, or more often, seems shocked that I know how to draw a diagram, I
> can point them to the Great Diagrams of Anthropology, Linguistics, and
> Social Theory with pride.
>
> Dori
>
>