Introduction to Design Theory

Michalle Gal is a Professor of Philosophy at the Unit of History and Philosophy of Art and Design and the Interdisciplinary Design Graduate Program, Shenkar College, Israel. Gal is the author of Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics: A Formalist Theory of Metaphor (2022) and Aestheticism: Deep Formalism and the Emergence of Modernist Aesthetics (2015), and the co-editor of the special issues Art and Gesture (2014), Visual Hybrids (2023, Poetics Today) and Design and its Relations (2023, Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics).Jonathan Ventura is a Professor of Design Theory and Research and the Director of the Unit for History and Philosophy of Art and Design at Shenkar College, Israel; Ventura is also a visiting scholar at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art, UK, and an international instructor at the PhD School at MOME University in Budapest Hungary. He is the co-founder and co-director of the international Social Design Network (https://www.socialdesignnetwork.org/).

"Michalle Gal and Jonathan Ventura have produced a fascinating historical tour of the complexities of design theory with all its contradictions and reversals. The stumbles and contradictions are important, for they show that the answer to what appears to be a simple question, ‘what is design?’, changes every time new findings and evidence appears. The book should appeal to students and advanced scholars, showing that this confusion is proper and appropriate. Their summary is apt: design is a bricolage of methods and approaches. We should not ask ‘what is design?’ but instead ask ‘what can design achieve?’"Don Norman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of California, San Diego, USA; and author of "Design for a Better World"."Michalle Gal and Jonathan Ventura provide a wide-ranging and engaging survey of the many facets of Design. Touching on perennial theoretical questions as well as contemporary examples and issues, An Introduction to Design Theory will appeal to theorists and practitioners alike."Glenn Parsons, Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada.

• Introduction 1. Definitions of Design 2. Form and Function 3. Design and (or as) Language 4. Design Between Theory and Practice: Applied Theories of Design 5 Design, Culture, and Social Institutions 6. Design and Industry 7. Design, Ecologies and the Body 8. Design and Ideology