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Design Studies: A Reader
Design Studies: A Reader is the ideal entry point for any student who wants to understand the many complex roles of design--as process, product, function, symbol, and use.
Reflecting the diverse range of perspectives on design, the reader brings together over 70 key texts. The essays are presented in themed sections covering history, methods, theory, visuality, identity, consumption, labor, industrialization, new technology, sustainability, and globalization. Each section is separately introduced and each concluded with a guide to further reading.
Authors include: Theodor Adorno, Arjun Appadurai, Rayner Banham, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, Cheryl Buckley, Michel de Certeau, Margaret Crawford, Michel Foucault, Buckminster Fuller, Paul du Gay, Erving Goffman, Donna Haraway, John Chris Jones, Guy Julier, Naomi Klein, Ezio Manzini, Victor Margolin, and many others. In addition, a final section of specially commissioned essays analyzes 10 seminal designs of the 20th Century, from Helvetica to the cell phone.
Bringing together the best classic and contemporary writing, Design Studies: A Reader will be invaluable to all students of Design as well as to students of Architecture, Art, Material Culture and Sociology.
Reflecting the diverse range of perspectives on design, the reader brings together over 70 key texts. The essays are presented in themed sections covering history, methods, theory, visuality, identity, consumption, labor, industrialization, new technology, sustainability, and globalization. Each section is separately introduced and each concluded with a guide to further reading.
Authors include: Theodor Adorno, Arjun Appadurai, Rayner Banham, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, Cheryl Buckley, Michel de Certeau, Margaret Crawford, Michel Foucault, Buckminster Fuller, Paul du Gay, Erving Goffman, Donna Haraway, John Chris Jones, Guy Julier, Naomi Klein, Ezio Manzini, Victor Margolin, and many others. In addition, a final section of specially commissioned essays analyzes 10 seminal designs of the 20th Century, from Helvetica to the cell phone.
Bringing together the best classic and contemporary writing, Design Studies: A Reader will be invaluable to all students of Design as well as to students of Architecture, Art, Material Culture and Sociology.
658 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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February 28, 2023Design Studies: A Reader by Hazel Clark (2009)
August 2, 2011
I’d like to kick off my review with two citations from Susan S. Szenasy’s article “Ethical Design Education” which is an article featured in “Design Studies: a reader”:
“good design is responsible design”
“acting on our obligation to our human family can result in rewards far beyond our expectations”
Hazel Clark is the Chair of the Department for Art and Design at Parsons, New York. David Brody is an associate professor at the same institution. Together they have edited “Design Studies: A reader”, providing us with a comprehensive introduction to the design discipline. To say that “good design is responsible design” is common sense, to achieve this is far more demanding and requires a deeper understanding of what constitutes responsible design. Through a variety of text excerpts, short articles and specially commissioned essays the book navigates the reader through a diversity of themes related to design organized into 7 sections: “History”, “Design Thinking”, “Theorizing”, “Identity and Consumption”, “Labor, Industrialization and New Technology”, “Design and Global Issues”, “Design Things”. The wide range of essays and narrators make this text an interesting read with a wide diversity of perspectives. Between the sections there are introductions and summaries by the editors, giving the text its sectional framing and distinct scholarly orientation. Though a great book to use to look up design themes, contributors and pick out excerpts, I found it useful to start the readings by getting acquainted with the editors and their thoughts and biases by reading the section introductions.
Big Idea:
A collection of texts that can be seen as the “best of” in terms of getting the big picture of what design needs to deal with in the 21st Century.
Useful learning outcomes and applications for designers:
Paired with thorough introductions and summaries for each section, the literary collection can bridge a student’s novice understanding, usually as encountered through personal consumption, to a refined multifaceted understanding required to design responsibly. For those new to the design research and who find it hard to navigate a vast and dispersed field of design relevant literature, this is a good starting point to organize thoughts and ideas to build your further research around.
What people are saying:
A critical snapshot of what’s vital now in global comparative critical thinking in Design.The clearly structured and framed sets of key essays disclose the full reach and power of the myriad acts of designing that create our realities and, increasingly, narrow our future options -Lisa Norton, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA
A wonderful and richly engaging book that would be invaluable to any student both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels of study to draw upon as a one-stop companion and reliable point of reference
-The Design Journal
Provides a great deal of food for thought for beginning design students form numerous sub-disciplines and is also a good refresher for more advanced scholars - Design Issue
Recommended reading extensions that compliment this book:
As this is a book with a wide range of essay topics, the literary extensions can take very different courses. Here are some that also have tried to address the totality of design studies:
Article by M. P. Ranjan “Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design”
Book “Design Research Now” edited by Ralf Michel, published by Birkhauser
“good design is responsible design”
“acting on our obligation to our human family can result in rewards far beyond our expectations”
Hazel Clark is the Chair of the Department for Art and Design at Parsons, New York. David Brody is an associate professor at the same institution. Together they have edited “Design Studies: A reader”, providing us with a comprehensive introduction to the design discipline. To say that “good design is responsible design” is common sense, to achieve this is far more demanding and requires a deeper understanding of what constitutes responsible design. Through a variety of text excerpts, short articles and specially commissioned essays the book navigates the reader through a diversity of themes related to design organized into 7 sections: “History”, “Design Thinking”, “Theorizing”, “Identity and Consumption”, “Labor, Industrialization and New Technology”, “Design and Global Issues”, “Design Things”. The wide range of essays and narrators make this text an interesting read with a wide diversity of perspectives. Between the sections there are introductions and summaries by the editors, giving the text its sectional framing and distinct scholarly orientation. Though a great book to use to look up design themes, contributors and pick out excerpts, I found it useful to start the readings by getting acquainted with the editors and their thoughts and biases by reading the section introductions.
Big Idea:
A collection of texts that can be seen as the “best of” in terms of getting the big picture of what design needs to deal with in the 21st Century.
Useful learning outcomes and applications for designers:
Paired with thorough introductions and summaries for each section, the literary collection can bridge a student’s novice understanding, usually as encountered through personal consumption, to a refined multifaceted understanding required to design responsibly. For those new to the design research and who find it hard to navigate a vast and dispersed field of design relevant literature, this is a good starting point to organize thoughts and ideas to build your further research around.
What people are saying:
A critical snapshot of what’s vital now in global comparative critical thinking in Design.The clearly structured and framed sets of key essays disclose the full reach and power of the myriad acts of designing that create our realities and, increasingly, narrow our future options -Lisa Norton, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA
A wonderful and richly engaging book that would be invaluable to any student both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels of study to draw upon as a one-stop companion and reliable point of reference
-The Design Journal
Provides a great deal of food for thought for beginning design students form numerous sub-disciplines and is also a good refresher for more advanced scholars - Design Issue
Recommended reading extensions that compliment this book:
As this is a book with a wide range of essay topics, the literary extensions can take very different courses. Here are some that also have tried to address the totality of design studies:
Article by M. P. Ranjan “Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design”
Book “Design Research Now” edited by Ralf Michel, published by Birkhauser
April 27, 2013
The majority of the articles are efficacious. I especially read the section 5: "Labor, Industrialization, and new Technology" in detail, that covers different ideas about labor, and how work, both physical and intellectual, creates design; and assumes the importance of industrialization in relation to design, and finally concludes how technology changes our perception about culture, fashion or the workplace. I highly recommend this section to anyone who interested in learning about how Industrial revolution changes zeitgeist of the life.
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