Dear All,
Thanks to Stephen Allard for an elegant, lucid note [1, below]. It explains why design studies involves design history without becoming the same thing.
This morning, I took a look at the excellent Clark and Brody (2009) anthology. Several of the articles are classics of design studies and come involve design history. The genre of the “reader” generally involves a selection of articles that have achieved broad respect as having some kind of broad or fundamental value. In this sense, many of these articles are historical in some respect, but they are not works of history. The Clark and Brody’s Design Studies contains 80 articles [2, below]. Of these, somewhere between 10% and 20% involve design history — depending on how you define the term in an interdisciplinary book. The other articles comes from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives — anthropology, sociology, psychology, social psychology, urban studies, architecture, education, design thinking, systems studies, knowledge management, economics, industrial ecology, design, design theory, and more — even engineering.
There is a semantic slippage between the subject header “Design Studies and Design History” and the several uses of the words “history” and “historical.” Both terms have several meanings.
Because they rely on evidence from the past, no matter how recent, all case studies and nearly all articles involving empirical research have an historical dimension. So do articles that have embedded themselves in the discourse of a field. In design, for example, this is the case for several articles in the reader. For example, Dick Buchanan’s 1992 article on “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking” is one of the most highly cited articles in our field. It is a work of historical value but it is not a work of design history.
In much the same sense, works across many fields draw on history without being works of history. Because they rely on examples, nearly all great works of economics from Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Paul Krugman and Thomas Piketty require historical material to build the models and theories they present. Sometimes even historians don’t write history: Daniel Boorstin’s works of history are about history, but his works of political theory draw on history to explain national culture and to explain some aspects of current affairs at the time he wrote.
All things considered, I draw two conclusions. First, design studies is not synonymous with design history. Second, we must distinguish among different ways to use the terms “history” and “historical” for the term to have meaning.
My two cents.
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
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References
Clark, Hazel, and David Brody. 2009. Design Studies. A Reader. London: Berg Publishers.
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[1] Stephen B Allard wrote:
—snip—
I'm currently teaching a course titled "Modern Design Theory"
I am finding it impossible to introduce the concepts of 'modernism', 'design' and 'theory' and to students born after 1990, without some sort of mention of design's historical roots dating back to 1500 AD and the beginning of the Modern era. I've also had to differentiate modern social theory (macro) with that of practical theory (micro).
The first half of the semester is all about historical context (i.e art movements, world wars, mass production, corporate communication, consumerism et al). The second half will be about exposure to what is currently being used and experimented with today (i.e design thinking, online education, globalization, sustainability, experience design, 3D printing, renewable energy, environmental and resource limits et al).
I believe it is possible and necessary to compress the two subjects of history and its studies together into one course in order for students to understand where design has been and then be able to add value to the current design zeitgeist upon their graduation.
The continued compression of design's history, methods and its theories as they are increasingly spread wider and applied to more and more of today's issues, is tremendously facilitated by technology and its ability to add and edit information to design's ever growing online dialogue and database.
—snip—
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[2] Table of Contents of Clark and Brody's (2009) Design Studies. A Reader.
http://www.bloomsbury.com/au/design-studies-9781847882363/
—snip—
SECTION I: HISTORY OF DESIGN
Section Introduction
I.1: DESIGN HISTORIES
Part Introduction
1. Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design
2. Adrian Forty, Design, Designers and the Literature of Design
3. Matthew Turner, Early Modern Design in Hong Kong
4. Lucila Fernández Uriate, Modernity and Postmodernity from Cuba
I.2: DESIGN HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE
Part Introduction
5. Victor Margolin, Design History and Design Studies
6. John Walker, Defining the Object of Study
7. Judy Attfield, FORM/female FOLLOWS FUNCTION/male
8. Denise Whitehouse, The State of Design History as a Discipline
Annotated Guide to Further Reading
SECTION II: DESIGN THINKING
Section Introduction
II.1: DESIGN PHILOSOPHIES AND THEORIES
Part Introduction
9. Buckminster Fuller, Speculative Prehistory of Humanity
10. John Chris Jones, What is Designing?
11. Louis Bucciarelli, Designing Engineers
12. Henry Petroski, Success and Failure in Design
13. Richard Buchanan, Wicked Problems in Design Thinking
II.2: DESIGN RESEARCH
Part Introduction
14. Herbert Simon, Understanding the Natural and Artificial Worlds
15. Donald Schön, Designing; Rules, Types and Worlds
16. Susan Squires, Discovery Research
II: 3 DESIGN COMMUNICATIONS
Part Introduction
17. Eric van Schaak, The Division of Pictorial Publicity in World War I
18. D.J Huppatz, Globalizing Corporate Identity in Hong Kong
19. Shirley Teresa Wajda, Kmartha
Annotated Guide to Further Reading
SECTION III: THEORIZING DESIGN AND VISUALITY
Section Introduction
III.1: AESTHETICS
Part Introduction
20. Arthur C. Danto, Aesthetics and the Work of Art
21. Jean Baudrillard, Design and Environment
22. Reyner Banham, Taking it with You
III.2: ETHICS
Part Introduction
23. Zygmunt Bauman, In the Beginning was Design
24. Susan Szenasy, Ethical Design Education
25. AIGA/Rick Poyner, First Things First 2000
26. Clive Dilnot, Ethics in Design: 10 Questions
III.3: POLITICS
Part Introduction
27. Karl Marx, The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof
28. Pierre Bourdieu, The Aesthetic Sense and the Sense of Distinction
29. Naomi Klein, No Logo
30. Dick Hebdige, Subculture and Style
31. John Stones, Incendiary Devices
32. Gui Bonsiepe, Design and Democracy
III.4 MATERIAL CULTURE AND SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
Part Introduction
33. Jules Prown , Mind in Matter
34. Daniel Miller , The Artefact as Manufactured Object
35. Michel Foucault, Panopticism
36. Michel de Certeau, Walking in the City
37. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Annotated Guide to Further Reading
SECTION IV: IDENTITY AND CONSUMPTION
Section Introduction
IV.1: VIRTUAL IDENTITY AND DESIGN
Part Introduction
38. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto
39. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Introducing Cybernetic Systems
40. Justin Clark, Get a Life
41. Gavin O'Malley, American Apparel
IV.2: GENDER AND DESIGN
Part Introduction
42. Cheryl Buckley, Made in Patriarchy
43. Barbara Ehrenreich and Annette Fuentes, Life on the Global Assembly Line
44. Hazel Clark The Difference of Female Design
IV.3: CONSUMPTION
Part Introduction
45. Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, Technology and Consumption
46. Daniel Harris, Quaintness
47. Sarah Lichtman, Do-It-Yourself Security
48. W.F. Haug, Critique of Commodity Aesthetics
49. Heike Jenß, Fashioning Uniqueness: Mass-Customization and Commodization of Identity
Annotated Guide to Further Reading
SECTION V: LABOR, INDUSTRIALIZATION AND NEW TECHNOLOGY
Section Introduction
V.1: LABOR AND THE PRODUCTION OF DESIGN
Part Introduction
50. John Styles, Manufacturing Consumption and Design
51. Paul du Gay, et al, The Sony Walkman
52. Stuart Walker, Integration of Scale
V.2: INDUSTRIALIZATION AND POST INDUSTRIALIZATION
Part Introduction
53. David Brett, Drawing and the Ideology of Industrialization
54. Margaret Crawford, The 'New' Company Town
55. Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management
56. Abraham Moles, Design and Immateriality
V.3: NEW DESIGN AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Part Introduction
57. Bradley Quinn, Hussein Chalayan, Fashion and Technology
58. Donald Norman, What's Wrong with the PC?
59. Vicente Rafael, The Cell Phone and the Crowd
60. Theodor Adorno, Do Not Knock
Annotated Guide to Further Reading
SECTION VI: DESIGN AND GLOBAL ISSUES
Section Introduction
VI.1: GLOBALIZATION
Part Introduction
61. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large
62. Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Globalism, Nationalism, and Design
63. Guy Julier, Responses to Globalisation
VI.2: EQUALITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Part Introduction
64. Kate Stohr, Self-Help and Sites-and Services Programs
65. John Hockenberry, The Re-Education of Michael Graves
66. Ezio Manzini, A Cosmopolitan Localism
67. Earl Tai, Design Justice
VI.3: SUSTAINABILITY
Part Introduction
68. William McDonough and Michael Braungart, A Question of Design
69. Victor Papanek, Designing for a Safe Future
70. Trish Lorenz, British Designers Accused of Creating Throw-Away Culture
Annotated Guide to Further Reading
SECTION VII: DESIGN THINGS
Section Introduction
71. Wava Carpenter, The Eames Lounge: The Difference between a Design Icon and Mere Furniture
72. Dipti Bhagat, The Tube Map (The London Underground Map)
73. Susan Yelavich, Swatch
74. Catherine Walsh, Architecture and Cultural Identity: The Case of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur
75. R. Roger Remington, Helvetica: Love it or Leave it
76. Shirley Teresa Wajda, The Architect and the Teakettle
77. Greg Votolato, Bullets and Beyond (The Shinkanzen)
78. Alison Gill, Sneakers
79. Bess Williamson, The Bicycle: Considering Design in Use
80. Gerard Goggin, Cell Phone
—snip—
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