Design – serie

Berlin, the first European UNESCO City of Design, is known for the diversity of its design production, the versatility of its actors and their innovative spirit. This book is a cross-section through the best of Berlin design, the main part is the presentation of designers and their work, while a few short essays set them in context. Though structured in fields, its approach is consciously interdisciplinary, looking at the intersections between different types of design production.

Graphic design is the creation of visual contents in various media, whose presentation conveys information to other people. The field is interdisciplinary and subject to constantly changing conditions and different interpretations. This unusual book presents 100 young designers as well as established graphic companies, each on a double page designed by him, her or them. All artists were given the same sample page and the same specified font sizes and number of key strokes. They were free to design the contents of the pages themselves, arrange the text and individual pictures. Minimalist pages are juxtaposed to seemingly overloaded compositions, limited colors to expressive shapes and colors. This resulted in a comprehensive cornucopia of graphic possibilities and trends of the early second decade of the 21st century.

As a teenager, I spent my time wondering why in sci-fi movies, every landscape, every object I could see was Western or Asian based. I've finally understood that somewhere our legacy had been locked in the past, that we couldn't be "futuristic" in the eyes of our fellow Europeans. We have to look behind our shoulders, get back to our traditions, seize the best of them and shape a future with it. This without forgetting we are part of the world, totally, unquestionably. The future is for me not only a matter of dialogue with the past, but and beyond everything a dialogue with the rest of the planet. Kossi Aguessy How is it possible to adequately capture histories of design in Africa, a continent with fifty-four countries? How can one avoid producing just another essentialising master narrative of "African Design"? How can one make sense of the many entangled yet often asymmetric and sometimes ambivalent histories of form-finding processes between Africa and Europe? In keeping with the premises of a global art and design history approach, the book offers a change of perspective: focusing on the mobility of people, objects and ideas - on flows between Africa and Europe as well as on a South-South axis - allows for multiple yet necessarily fragmented design histories to be identified and recognised. The contributors trace multi-faceted design case studies from a historical perspective, with attention to the present as well as towards possible futures.

What is the logic of design process? Departing from this question, Tiago da Costa e Silva investigates the characteristic feature of every projective activity, for instance, in architecture, design, engineering design, and in the arts. In opposition to predominant views that understand design processes as mechanical and deterministic, this study, with the help of the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, characterizes design activities as continuous and serendipitous interplays of esthetic and abductive processes that define rules and manifest forms. Tiago da Costa e Silva concludes that invention and discovery, manifested in the form of processes of abduction, actively pervade every development in any given context of design process.

In its constructive and speculative nature, design has the critical potential to reshape prevalent socio-material realities. At the same time, design is inevitably normative, if not often violent, as it stabilises the past, normalises the present, and precludes just and sustainable futures. The contributions rethink concepts of critique that influence the field of design, question inherent blind spots of the discipline, and expand understandings of what critical design practices could be.With contributions from design theory, practice and education, art theory, philosophy, and informatics, »Critical by Design?« aims to question and unpack the ambivalent tensions between design and critique.

Since the 1990s, the concern to define areas of research in design has dominated academic debates. As a result, we are now facing a multitude of understandings. This is especially true for practice-based design research. Sandra Dittenberger, Hans Stefan Moritsch and Agnes Raschauer discuss how the concept of learning by research can be integrated into product design studio teaching. They show different international approaches for integrating research into teaching and contrast the areas of design research with scientific standards. The book features study results that helped generate both a general orientation for research in design education and guidelines for students of how to integrate research into their project work.

What does it take to create innovative tech-savvy designs that are usable, appealing, and good for society? The contributions to this volume introduce contemporary research on the digitization and »datafication« of products, exploring topics like user experience, artificial intelligence, and virtual environments in design. Coming from varied backgrounds in product design, interaction design, service design, game design, architecture, and graphic design, they emphasize that digital transformation is not just a technical process, but also a social and learning process that fundamentally changes the way we understand information.

In the small world of Swiss graphic design, prizes such as the Swiss Design Awards (SDA) are followed closely. The winners' works are admired, envied and emulated. The generous prize money allows designers to launch their careers and focus on lesser paid but critically recognised work. Awards thus play the role of bellwethers of the scene. However, criticisms inevitably arise. Speaking in hushed tones, designers speculate as to why a colleague won over another. Rumours have it that jury members favour their inner circles and exclude competitors. Analysing this universe in detail, Jonas Berthod retraces the recent history of the SDA and the emergence of a new design culture in Switzerland.

In our era of rapid, breathless change, we need concepts of human education that promise sustainability, along with a corresponding architecture of learning. The pursuit of knowledge has always been regarded as a key to a better life – both individually and collectively – and the social value of learning is reflected most vividly in the environments where it takes place. What kind of architecture do we need for a holistic concept of education that anticipates future developments? And how can the built environment support the transformation of accumulated knowledge into lived experience and embodied wisdom? Answers to such questions have often found meaningful expression in the typology of the library – and continue to do so today. This book addresses vital questions of education, human epistemics, knowledge, and their architectural settings from diverse disciplinary perspectives.

Design, as a discipline, has historically demonstrated responsiveness to societal developments and crises. However, amidst the multifaceted challenges of our times, there is a growing discourse surrounding the potential for design to not only react but also serve as a catalyst for transformative change. This discourse raises pivotal questions about the role of design in fostering hope, generating realistic solutions, and mitigating global and local crises. Drawing upon interdisciplinary perspectives and empirical research as well as case studies, the contributors to this volume critically examine the evolving role of designers in responding to contemporary crises.

Today, we not only design and produce artifacts, but also subjective experiences, life models and social change. This active shaping of our life circumstances is usually seen as a plannable and methodical activity. However, practice shows that a multitude of uncertainties, non-conceptualizable actions and forms of not-knowing are involved in these processes. The contributions in this volume are dedicated to dealing with the unknown in design, art, and technology.

Boken Design 1 omfattar momenten i kursen med samma namn enligt Gy 2011 och innehåller både faktastoff och förslag till arbetsuppgifter. Boken inleds med en presentation av designbegreppet, dess olika former från formgivning av prydnadsföremål till formgivning av datorgränssnitt (sk interaktionsdesign). Projektarbete är en viktig arbetsform och hur detta kan appliceras på designprocessen behandlas därför tidigt i boken där det också ges ett stort antal förslag på projektarbetsuppgifter.

Att skapa god funktion kräver kunskaper inom tekniska områden som materiallära och ergonomi, och för att skapa en god form krävs kunskaper och färdigheter i estetiska ämnen som bild och konst. Större delen av boken behandlar därför områden där teknik och estetik möts; om tekniskt möjligt formskapande i olika material, om skissteknik, färger och bilduttryck. I boken ingår även ett kapitel om designhistoria.