Hi Ann and others
The 'behavior steering design' strand of the literature you mentioned
reminds me of the quote from Block contributor Philippa Goodall: 'design
for use is design of use.' Block was a journal that took a
Marxist-inspired structuralist approach to studying design artefacts.
They approached the study of artefacts within the context of the
economic, social and production processes they were created by and were
a part of. Many of the articles are re-published in the Block Reader in
Visual Culture.
Another relevant contributor to Block is Necdet Teymur. He emphasises
the roles these contextual economic influences play in constructing
artefacts over that of the designer. He writes from an architecture
perspective.
Foucault's concept of governmentality is also relevant to your search.
Dori Tunstall is the only author I know of applying this theory to the
study of design artefacts.
These authors constitute a fourth strand in the literature: how
artefacts communicate discourses.
To the first strand you identify, 'how those in power use artifacts to
mediate power,' you could add studies in visual rhetoric. This is
perhaps more relevant in relation to graphic design artefacts. Some
people working in this field seek to demonstrate how visual artefacts
have been used as a governmental strategy (akin to other governmental
strategies such as public policy and social welfare) for the purposes of
manipulating public opinion and national identity. Olson and Kostelnick
are two examples I can think of. Wally Olins is also illuminating on
this subject, although his business is to work as an agent for
governments on this point, rather than to theorise or critique the
activity.
Let us know the list you end up with.
Best
Katherine Hepworth
References
Dean, M. (1999). Governmentality. London: Sage.
Goodall, P. (1996). Design and Gender. In G. Robertson & J. Bird (Eds.),
The Block Reader in Visual Culture. London: Routledge. p. 202.
Kostelnick, C. (2004). Melting-Pot Ideology, Modernist Aesthetics, and
the Emergence of Graphical Conventions: The Statistical Atlases of the
United States, 1874–1925. In C. A. Hill & M. Helmers (Eds.), Defining
Visual Rhetorics. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Olins, W. (2003). Branding the Nation. In On Brand (pp. 150-169).
London: Thames and Hudson.
Olson, L. C. (2004). Benjamin Franklin's Vision of American Community: A
study in rhetorical iconology. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press.
Teymur, N. (1996). The Materiality of Design. In G. Robertson & J. Bird
(Eds.), The Block Reader in Visual Culture. London: Routledge. p. 158.
Tunstall, D. (2007). In Design We Trust: Design, Governmentality and the
Tangibility of Governance. Paper presented at the IASDR07.
---
Katherine Hepworth
Research Assistant
National Institute of Design Research
Swinburne University of Technology
144 High Street Prahran
Victoria 3181 Australia
Telephone +61 9214 6096
Facsimilie +61 3 9521 2665
www.swinburne.edu.au/design
|