Design - Essays

With politics and the internet increasingly interwoven, new media design confronts the cultural challenges of the presentOver the past two decades, the relationship between politics and new media has tightened steadily, giving rise to a "superstorm" of sorts. Within this intersection, politics mingles with...

The State of Housing Design 2023 is the first report in a new series that reviews national trends, ideas, and critical issues as they relate to residential design. This volume examines recently built housing projects of notable design that address issues of affordability, social...

Examining design education and the legacies of colonialismAddressing the histories and speculating on the futures of radical design and art education, Decolonising Design Education looks at the role that different institutional modes play in these endeavors. Developed in a dialogue among Regina Bittner, Katja...

Beyond the Bauhaus school: how international pedagogy influenced design as a careerThis book explores the emergence of the artist and designer profession after the First World War and the further development of this career in close proximity to capitalist industrial production. The book features...

Design for a Radically Changing World brings to light the impact of design on our everyday lives and offers innovative ways that design can help address some of the world's most pressing issues and urgent crises. From rethinking the future of work and the...

A witty, tongue-in-cheek discussion of design's potentials and pitfallsIn focusing on creating preferable conditions, the discipline of design is optimistic by default. And yet, vernacular manifestations of skepticism, dissatisfaction and even resentment toward design abound. Instead of systematically discarding them, can these "sad passions"...

A love letter to the small shop, and shop owners everywhere, by beloved bookseller Peter Miller. "There is a tradition of shopkeeping, a tradition of codes, etiquette, and customs. For the most part, it is an oral history, passed along, person to person. You...

This is the first time all the different iterations of this textile have been comprehensively brought together in one volume, drawing from the wide-ranging collection of David Paly It is a journey across the world through the lens of ikat Deceptively simple or fantastically...

Cracking the Whip is a collection of 69 essays that looks at just about everything in design: clothes, hardware, posters, cars, airports, chairs, lighting, vending machines, cities and bathrooms. They are about how we use design, language and instinct to navigate our everyday world...

Over the last 85 years, the Institute of Design's pioneering approach has brought about three distinct design eras--experimentation, systems design, and human-centered design--and each of these eras build on the strengths of previous ones. The history of ID, then, is synonymous with the history...

Stop Looking for Zebras is a no-nonsense, engaging and practical guide to keeping your job and sanity in this ever-changing world of creative communications. Over twenty years in the making, it is a deep dive into the creative process providing observations, exercises and anecdotes...

"If anyone knows about how to live beautifully and comfortably, it's Kevin Calica. The years we worked together were always inspirational. Kevin is a true artist and innovator. This book is a must read " -Calvin Klein Do you live your life by accident...

A richly illustrated exploration of the history, art, and design of printed LSD blotter tabs. Blotter is the first comprehensive written account of the history, art, and design of LSD blotter paper, the iconic drug delivery device that will perhaps forever be linked to...

More than 140 illustrated biographical profiles map the innovative modern California design community.Mid-twentieth-century California offered fertile ground for design innovations. The state's reputation as a land of unlimited opportunity, its many institutions of higher learning, and its perpetually booming population created conditions that allowed...

This book provides literature of the social movements that led to the rise of alternative design methods. It also critically examines the methodologies used and how they contribute to best practice in place-making; and it suggests universal application that may be incorporated in the...

Thirteen words, thirteen protagonists, thirteen stories. This special journey crosses different regions and tells of mastery, know-how, emotions, and characters that honor ancient Italian traditions. Gaggia, the brand that invented espresso machines for bars and homes, wanted to represent Italian creativity in 13 stories....

This is apared-down, demystified overview of the mental operations involved withcreating things aesthetic, i.e., art, design, and the like. It is adisarmingly clearheaded and unsentimental look at the creative process by aneminent creator. The book'sphotographs and design serve as an example of what the...

As seen in Design Matters with Debbie Millman, PRINT Magazine, The Slowdown, and Design BoomStefan Sagmeister's newest project encourages long-term thinking and reminds us that many things in the world are improvingInitially conceived in 2020 as the world entered pandemic lockdown, Stefan Sagmeister has...

A publication based on Pandemic Objects, an editorial project that compiles and reflects on objects that have taken on new meaning and purpose during the Covid-19 pandemic. During times of pandemic, a host of everyday often-overlooked 'objects' are suddenly charged with new urgency. Toilet...

Sustainability has emerged as a central issue for contemporary societies and for the world community as a whole. Furthermore, many of the social and environmental concerns that are embodied in the term 'sustainability' are directly or indirectly related to design. Designers help to define...

Wilson reports the findings of her fashion road trip across the United States, a journey that took three years and ranges across the various economic belt regions of America: the Cotton, Rust, Bible, Sun, Frost, Corn, and Gun Belts. Acting as a kind of...

Los Angeles is famous for many things: its traffic jams, its taco trucks, the palm trees, the sunshine. Electric Moons: A Social History of Street Lighting in Los Angeles explores one of its most overlooked design legacies--its streetlights.Today, we may not give streetlights much...

Author: Paul RandISBN-10: 1616894865ISBN-13: 9781616894863Publisher: Princeton Architectural PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 11/15/2016Pages: 256Format: HardcoverWeight: 2.65lbsSize: 10.20h x 7.80w x 1.10d

This timely collection brings together critical, analytic, historical, and practical studies to address what ethics means in the practice of design. Designers face the same challenges as everyone else in the complex conditions of contemporary cultural life-choices about consumption, waste, exploitation, ecological damage, and...

A conversational, impassioned treatise on the realities of a socially engaged design practicePacked with conversational interviews, personal and critical essays, and a wide-ranging collection of graphic works, Design against Design examines the realities and relations that constitute a socially engaged design practice. Canadian designer...

How to write about your work--an expert's guide to the craftIan Lynam's The Impossibility of Silence is a book for artists, photographers and designers interested in approaching writing about their vocation and culture. Drawing upon decades of experience as a writer, designer, artist and...

Illuminating their breadth and diversity, this book presents a comprehensive and multidisciplinary view of legal documents and their manifold forms, uses, materialities and meanings. In 1951, Suzanne Briet, a librarian at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, famously said that an antelope in a zoo...

The politics of a pictogram: technology, gender, race and class in the history of the heart symbolThe ubiquitous, benign and seemingly innocuous heart symbol hides a much more complex story than its appearance suggests. The heart is often described as a universal symbol for...

Over 100 tried and tested exercises to expand how we look at fashion, how we are part of its system and how we can practice fashion otherwise--for students of all ages and teachers of all disciplinesThis copious collection of bottom-up activities, prompts and workshops...

A rich, inclusive, contemporary, and global look at design diversity, past and present, through essays, interviews, and images curated by design educator and advocate Kaleena Sales. As the design industry reexamines its emphasis on Eurocentric ideologies and wrestles with its conventional practices, Centered advocates...

From the celebrated MUJI designer and bestselling author of 100 Whites and Designing Japan, a compact and beautifully designed guide to the art of cleaningCleanliness is a core value of societies around the globe. With beautiful photography and short, poetical observations, acclaimed author and...

Thomas Girard (born 30 December, 1980 in Vancouver, Canada) is a Canadian scholar. Girard was accepted to attend University of Oxford in lectures equivalent to graduate coursework. Girard has received several Emerging Scholar awards, first at the Design Principles and Practices conference in Barcelona,...

Nature of Enclosure interrogates the role of architecture and urbanization in a post-pandemic society, to discuss topics from closed forms of capital to the exclusive boundaries of environment and politics. From Crystal Palace in 1851 to Buckminster Fuller's Spaceship Earth in 1969, nature became...

"Ian Lynam is the Hunter S. Thompson of design writing." -Sereina RothenbergerA personal book about material anxiety in creative work, The Failed Painter discusses singular and multiple production processes, perfectibility and imperfectability in times of virtual surface, and hunger for authenticity. Writing in the...

On the conditions and limits of critical thinking for design culture under capitalismDesign schools increasingly urge students to address social, political and environmental issues in their work. But who can afford to work in this way after graduation?In a dynamic style that draws from...

Innovating the Design Process: A Theatre Design Journey explores the process of designing for theatre and details how each part of a designer's own process, no matter what their design specialization, can be innovated and adapted for a more confident journey and for better...

Social media has brought a new type of space into the world of fashion retail. When architecture and fashion meet in the creation of ephemeral spaces for the immediate presentation of new collections, for example, these temporary but real spaces are brought into the...

The use of violent imagery in contemporary designWhether in political conflicts or conflicts in everyday life, the subject of violence is ever-present. But how do designers deal with violence? This book explores this topic, including works by Barnaby Barford, Ray and Charles Eames, Jan...

In the form of the Glove, Deutsches Ledermuseum is tracing the varied cultural history of an accessory whose importance is often underestimated. Text in English and German.Author: Inez Florschutz, Leonie Wiegand, Madeleine HaseISBN-10: 3897906856ISBN-13: 9783897906853Publisher: Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt GmbHLanguage: EnglishPublished: 04/05/2023Pages: 224Format: HardcoverWeight: 2.75lbsSize: 11.42h...

Now back in print, this field guide to our new world of hybrid specimens--gorgeously printed in silver ink on black paper--catalogs the conflation of the technosphere and the biospherePlastiglomerates, surveillance robot dogs, fordite, artificial grass, antenna trees, Covid, decapitated mountains, drone-fighting eagles, standardized bananas:...

Deep-Seated - The Secret Art of Upholstery explores furniture and its interiors and explains why upholstery is always also a part of cultural and social history. Text in English and German.Author: Olaf ThormannISBN-10: 3897906813ISBN-13: 9783897906815Publisher: Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt GmbHLanguage: EnglishPublished: 04/05/2023Pages: 392Format: PaperbackWeight: 4.10lbsSize: 11.65h...

Shine allures and awakens desire. As a phenomenon of perception shiny things and materials fascinate and tantalize. They are a formative element of material culture, promising luxury, social distinction and the hope of limitless experience and excess. Since the early twentieth century the mass...

Design is a widely-misunderstood discipline. In fact, the design profession itself often accepts and promotes a vague and misleading definition of design. The Nature of Design asks design professionals, their clients and interested students to examine the fundamental nature and practice of their discipline,...

Out of the 1920s Surrealist art studios emerged the exquisite corpse, a collaboratively drawn body made whole through a series of disjointed parts whose relevance today is the subject of Exquisite Corpse: Studio Art-Based Writing in the Academy. This collection draws from the processes...

Building Practice features interviews with architects, designers, educators, curators, fabricators, strategists, critics, and activists who are advancing speculative design through the culture and politics of building, capturing critical and formative moments associated with building a practice. Each interview reveals strategies for linking practical and...

Discover the keys to managing mental wellness as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is full of exciting highs, stressful lows, and anxious moments. The author, Sacha J. Walton, describes the value of prioritizing mental well-being after her business was negatively impacted by COVID-19 and the 2020...

- Around 45 international events: real, hybrid, virtual, immersiveAfter over two years of COVID-19, there is now a bright light at the end of the tunnel: most events can take place again. New formats and digital approaches have become established and professionalized and the...

The mirror is imperfect. Bodies require a medium to connect with departed spirits, but the surface is smeared by bugs. Beneath the residue, playtime in the dark. The self emerges where you least expect it...Offal Opacities mixes three short essays concerning digital visibility, corporeal...

In a world of change we cling to constants that comfort us while catastrophes lure behind cut corners. We compartmentalize and channel our focus into cones of concentration when confronted with choices. Many might decide to do so with intention while others simply try...

When and why did the turntable morph from playback device to musical instrument? Why have mobile phones evolved changeable skins? How many meanings can one attach to such mundane things as tennis balls? The answers to such questions illustrate this provocative book, which examines...