Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2019.Reading Graphic Design: •Is a much needed examination of graphic design in the expanded field •Forms an introduction to writing critically about graphic design through twelve chapters providing exemplary analyses of the semantic richness of the selected case studies •Goes beyond aesthetic judgments to explore how graphic design and illustration function as fields of industry and commerce in the West •Will inform, challenge and entertain undergraduate students of graphic design internationall

Dangerous Liaisons: Relationships between design, craft and art

The introductory essay [co-authored] examines the background and current interconnections between design, craft and the fine arts. This Special Issue was able to expand the debate by showing how attitudes to materials – from 19C sculpture to current fashion – appropriate craftsmanship to reinvigorate notions of handmaking

Design History: The State of the Art

© Copyright 2016 College Art Association. This manuscript version is mad available under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-ND 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ The version of record, Grace Lees-Maffei, ‘Design History: The State of the Art’, College Art Association, November 16, 2016, is available online via doi: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2016.153Design is a rich word. Its core meaning is a plan, so it refers by extension to evidence of the activity of planning, such as blueprints, technical drawings, and sketches on the backs of envelopes. However, it is also used to refer to the products of the activity of designing, such as designed objects, systems, and behaviors. Design history encompasses the study of design in order to find out about the past, and the study of the past in order to better understand design. Here I will briefly sketch the development of design history for those unfamiliar with it, including the international spread of the subject, and then focus on the current state of the field with reference to several key topics and work currently in progress.Peer reviewe

A GATHERING OF FLOWERS : ON DESIGN ANTHOLOGIES

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Design History on 12 May 2017, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14606925.2017.1323426 Under embargo. Embargo end date: 12 November 2018.Over the past decade, anthologies – also called ‘readers’ – of design history and theory have proliferated across publishers’ catalogues. These books perform important pedagogical functions: they define fields and establish canons of authoritative texts, authors and concepts. While detractors argue that the easy availability of textual sources online means that we no longer need anthologies, the opposite argument can be made: the overwhelming volume of electronic information sharpens the need for concise, edited selections. This article examines the practices of selecting, editing and publishing anthologies and reasons for their increasing popularity, particularly in design education, at the present time.Peer reviewe

Real imagined communities: : National narratives and the globalization of design history

Kjetil Fallan, and Grace Lees-Maffei, 'Real Imagined Communities: National Narratives and the Globalization of Design History', Design Issues, Vol. 31 (4): 5-18, January 2016, doi: 10.1162/DESI_a_00360, https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00360. © 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.The nation state is no longer the only socio-cultural or political-economic unit forming our identities and experiences, if it ever was, although national and regional histories of design have demonstrated cogent frameworks for the discussion of common socio-economic, cultural, and identity issues. In the context of celebrations and moral panic alike about the effect of globalization, recognizing that the much-vaunted global chains of design, manufacturing, and commerce are still composed of national endeavors is critical. This article argues for a reinsertion of the national category into contemporary academic understanding of design—both past and present. It provides a timely examination of the historiographic and methodological value of national frameworks in writing design history. We begin by examining how the dominant national paradigm ceded to the global as an academic, and mainstream, preoccupation, and then reintroduce the national into the global in design history.Peer reviewe

The poster session as fusing theory and practice in art and design education: exhibiting an occluded genre

While the academic poster has been used extensively in the sciences, its particular pertinence in art and design education remains unrecognised. Posters (outputs) and the poster sessions which accompany them (processes) form an ‘occluded genre’ in design education. The secondary literature about academic posters is typically ‘how-to’ rather than pedagogical analysis. We identify the benefits of using posters in design education, whether as formats for ‘regenring’ the conventional contextual studies essay, or as iterations towards essay work which draw on the skills students are developing in their design briefs and thereby bridging theory and practice, and accommodating diversity. Based on our pedagogical research in the UK and the Netherlands, this article reflects on how students respond to the benefits of the poster, and the poster session, and provides teachers with a clear rationale for their increased use in design education

Getting a Handle on It: Thomas Lamb, Mass Production, and Touch in Design History

© 2023 University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512824216-011This chapter proceeds from the premise that the hands which operated the machinery of capitalism were not merely a unit by which the power needed to perform the labor required was calculated but, rather, they were sentient and individuated, and are themselves worthy of the focal attention of the historian. I reflect on the construction of knowledge about the senses from the perspective of a design historian using tactile research methods to understand the design process. I examine a case study of design production with reference to the work of Thomas Lamb, the ‘Handle Man’, as it is evidenced in the Thomas Lamb collection at Hagley Museum and Library