RELATED TERMS: Design History; Modernity; Modernity and Coloniality; As noted in the Design History post, Lauren Williams (2019) posits an integral relationship among neoliberalism, design and racism in arguing that, “Racism and design have always supported capitalism, but as neoliberalization drives innovations on both, post-raciality and Design Thinking emerge, respectively, as new formations.” How canContinue reading “Design History and Racialisation [Footnote]”
Category Archives: Design History
The Surface of Design – Ranciere [Footnotes]
RELATED TERMS: Deutscher Werkbund; Distribution of the Sensible – Ranciere; Worldlessness #2: Worldlessness and Design In the context of design practice, design theory and design history, the essay, ‘The Surface of Design’, by Jacques Ranciere is highly relevant. What interests Ranciere when he speaks of design is the way in which one sense of theContinue reading “The Surface of Design – Ranciere [Footnotes] “
Design, the Buddhisms, Geo-Politics and Geo-Economics
RELATED TERMS: Mono No Aware and Ma; Sabi and Wabi-Sabi; World as Geoeconomics and Geopolitics [Snippets 10] Preamble In a post on David Lynch’s film set design in relation to the design of narrative environments (Narrative Environments – Lynchian Set Design), the significance of Tibet, meditation and yoga in Twin Peaks was seen to exhibit signsContinue reading “Design, the Buddhisms, Geo-Politics and Geo-Economics”
Design, Axiology and Value – Part 1
RELATED TERMS: The Commodity; Design History; Libidinal Economy – Part 1 “Valuing is a form of ranking” (Kelleher, 2015) Preamble The question for design practices running through the following text is whether they partake in keeping us focused on, in the words of Issberner and Lena (2023), “a naive faith in progress, consumerist ideology andContinue reading “Design, Axiology and Value – Part 1”
The Twentieth Century, America, Americanisation [Snippets 7]
RELATED TERMS: In 1932, Gertrude Stein wrote that America is, “the oldest country in the world because by the methods of the civil war and the commercial conceptions that followed it America created the twentieth century, and since all the other countries are now either living or commencing to be living a twentieth century life,Continue reading “The Twentieth Century, America, Americanisation [Snippets 7] “
Iconic Designs and Iconic Designers
RELATED TERMS: Design History; Iconic Designs, Critical Designs “Kenya Hara is a design icon.” (Design Intaba, 2004) Design is often spoken of in terms of ‘iconic’ designs[1] and ‘iconic’ designers. ‘Iconic’ designs are discussed frequently in terms of individual entities – ‘things’. ‘Iconic’ designers are individual, named designers – ‘persons’. ‘Iconic’ designs are most often productContinue reading “Iconic Designs and Iconic Designers”
Deutscher Werkbund
RELATED TERMS: Arts and Crafts Movement; Bauhaus; Gesamtkunstwerk; Hochschule fur Gestaltung; The Deutscher Werkbund was founded founded in Munich in 1907. It sought to bring together designers, manufacturers, writers and others in a progressive organisation that promoted modern design. The major difference between the Deutscher Werkbund and the Arts and Crafts movement was that theContinue reading “Deutscher Werkbund”
The Everyday and Design
RELATED TERMS: Alltäglichkeit; Dasein; De Certeau; Feminism and Materialism; Heidegger; Lefebvre; Lifeworld – Lebenswelt; Modernism; Sabi and Wabi-Sabi; Situationist International Use for: le quotidien “Ordinary life, [Barry Cryer] used to say, is badly written, so he infused it with jokes.” (Andrew Martin, 2023) “Design and the everyday are inextricably intertwined. Because it plays such aContinue reading “The Everyday and Design”
Design: Incomplete Conjectures
RELATED TERMS: Finnegans Wake (and Design); Methodology and Method First … Design as a professional, social practice has historically been divided according to its material outputs, its concrete products, using categories that have become conventional. For example, jewellery design produces items of jewellery, fashion design produces items of clothing and architectural design produces buildings andContinue reading “Design: Incomplete Conjectures”
Realism
RELATED TERMS: Actant; Audience; Defamiliarisation; Dau Project; Humanism; Posthumanism; “The essence of realism … is the distance taken with regard to stories, to their temporal schemes and their sequences of causes and effects. Realism opposes situations that endure to stories that link together and pass from one to the next.” (Ranciere, 2013: 7) “Stories demandContinue reading “Realism”
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