Victor Margolin

Richard Buchanan

Discovering Design reflects the growing recognition that the design of the everyday world deserves attention not only as a professional practice but as a subject of social, cultural, and philosophic investigation. Victor Margolin, cofounder and an editor of the journal Design Issues, and Richard Buchanan, also an editor of the journal, bring together eleven essays by scholars in fields ranging from psychology, sociology, and political theory to technology studies, rhetoric, and philosophy. The essayists share the editors' concern, first made clear in Margolin's Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism, with the the development of design studies as a field of interdisciplinary research. The contributors (Gianfranco Zaccai, Albert Borgmann, Richard Buchanan, Augusto Morello, Tufan Orel, Nigel Cross, Victor Margolin, Langdon Winner, Carl Mitcham, Tony Fry, and Ezio Manzini) focus on three broad themes that form a sequence of fundamental issues: how to shape design as a subject matter, how to distinguish the activity of designing in the complex world of action, and how to address the basic questions of value and responsibility that persistently arise in the discussion and practice of design. The editors' introduction provides a useful overview of these questions and offers a multidisciplinary framework for design studies. The essays discuss such topics as the relation of aesthetics to technology, the place of design in social action, the role of the consumer in design decisions, and the need for ethical practice in contemporary design. Manzini's concluding essay shows how the issue of ethics should connect responsible behavior to decisions made every day in the manufacture of objects.

Explorations in Design Studies

Discovering Design

Professor of Design Management & Information Systems George Richard Buchanan

The Idea of Design is an anthology of essays that addresses the nature and practiceof product design and graphic design in the contemporary world. The essays, selected from volumes4-9 of the international journal Design Issues, focus on three themes: reflection on the nature ofdesign, the meaning of products, and the place of design in world culture. The authors aredistinguished scholars, historians, designers, and design educators. The diversity of their workillustrates the pluralistic and interdisciplinary dimensions of the idea of design in contemporaryculture.Contributors : Rudolf Arnheim. S. Balaram. Richard Buchanan. A. Cheng. MihalyCsikszentmihalyi. Yves Deforge. Clive Dilnot. Alain Findeli. Jorge Frascara. Tony Fry. RajeswariGhose. Takuo Hirano. Martin Krampen. Laus Krippendorf. Tomas Maldonado. Victor Margolin. AbrahamMoles. Victor Papanek. Gert Selle. Ann Tyler. Barbara Usherwood.A Design Issues Reader

The Idea of Design

Nick Liddell

Who is McLaren's greatest nemesis? What disappoints Ocado about their competitors? What wakes Google up at 4am? Why does Wimbledon sweat the small stuff? Wild Thinking will provide readers with the confidence to run their business differently, through unique access to thinking from the most original organizations in business today. The most successful businesses in the world are singular in their goals, yet they express them in many different and creative ways, allowing them to own a space that's distinctly theirs. This book provides access to previously untold stories of how brand leaders at some of the most interesting global businesses solve their biggest challenges. Including interviews with Google, Ocado, McLaren, Comic Relief, V&A, National Trust, Dropbox and more, each chapter of Wild Thinking explores a different question about life and work, ending with a single-minded point of view to help you consider your business from a new perspective. It's hard to keep up and stand out in constantly growing and changing markets. To succeed you need absolute clarity about what your brand and business offers; it's time to break the rules.

Richard Buchanan

About

Books

Join the club