Designing Knowledge

By positioning designers and their practices at the center of design studies, Designing Knowledge merges theory and practice to highlight how knowledge creation can contribute to an expanded and more inclusive design practice. Bringing together a rich variety of perspectives, methods and approaches, and by exploring and critiquing current issues in design studies, this book encourages designers to reflect on their work in a new light.

Design studies practice is a material and tangible focus on knowledge production and mobilization in the field of design. Throughout 15 chapters featuring a wide range of case studies, design practitioners and theorists address how they produce and mobilize knowledge about design through their practice. Chapters explore how to dismantle the colonial structures of modernist design and depart from the privileged spaces of art historical concepts in design history. They address tensions between traditional Indigenous design and contemporary design practice, discuss how to authentically integrate personhood into practice and explore topics such as designing wellbeing, developing communities of care, informed accountability and principles of the ecocene. They also analyse languages and typographic representations and investigate the nature of the graphic and typographic translation of literary texts, focusing on the writing of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges as a case study.

This book elevates the voices of designers and their work and offers insights to professional designers as well as students on how to use these contributions when working on future projects. By highlighting the awareness of designers throughout their practice, this book will inspire others to reflect on their work and share their own knowledge for the benefit of the field of design.