Articles are gathered under the following headings: Borrowed designs; Understanding media; Identity and icon; Arts and crafts; Modern and other isms; Design 101; Future shocks; Facts and artifacts; Love, money, power; Public works.

Design and Culture: A Transdisciplinary History offers an inclusive overview that crosses disciplinary boundaries and helps define the next phase of global design practice. This book examines the interaction of design with advances in technology, developments in science, and changing cultural attitudes. It looks to the past to prepare for the future and is the first book to offer an innovative transdisciplinary design history that integrates multidisciplinary sources of knowledge into a mindful whole. It shows design as a process that expresses goals through values and beliefs, functioning as a major factor in contemporary cultural life. Starting with the development of the Industrial Revolution, the book focuses on the evolution of design and culture in the twentieth century to predict where design will go in the future. Given the major social and political shifts currently unfolding across the globe, and the resulting changing demographics and environmental degradation, Design and Culture encourages collaboration and communication between disciplines to prepare for the future of design in a rapidly changing world.

A collection of writing about design from the influential, eclectic, and adventurous Design Observer. Founded in 2003, Design Observer inscribes its mission on its homepage: Writings about Design and Culture. Since its inception, the site has consistently embraced a broader, more interdisciplinary, and circumspect view of design's value in the world—one not limited by materialism, trends, or the slipperiness of style. Dedicated to the pursuit of originality, imagination, and close cultural analysis, Design Observer quickly became a lively forum for readers in the international design community. Fifteen years, 6,700 articles, 900 authors, and nearly 30,000 comments later, this book is a combination primer, celebration, survey, and salute to a certain moment in online culture. This collection includes reassessments that sharpen the lens or dislocate it; investigations into the power of design idioms; off-topic gems; discussions of design ethics; and experimental writing, new voices, hybrid observations, and other idiosyncratic texts. Since its founding, Design Observer has hosted conferences, launched a publishing imprint, hosted three podcasts, and attracted more than a million followers on social media. All of these enterprises are rooted in the original mission to engage a broader community by sharing ideas on ways that design shapes—and is shaped by—our lives. Contributors include Sean Adams, Allison Arieff, Ashleigh Axios, Eric Baker, Rachel Berger, Andrew Blauvelt, Liz Brown, John Cantwell, Mark Dery, Michael Erard, Stephen Eskilson, Bryan Finoki, Kenneth FitzGerald, John Foster, Steven Heller, Karrie Jacobs, Meena Kadri, Mark Lamster, Alexandra Lange, Francisco Laranjo, Adam Harrison Levy, Mimi Lipson, KT Meaney, Thomas de Monchaux, Randy Nakamura, Phil Patton, Maria Popova, Rick Poynor, Louise Sandhaus, Dmitri Siegel, Martha Scotford, Adrian Shaughnessy, Andrew Shea, John Thackara, Dori Tunstall, Alice Twemlow, Tom Vanderbilt, Véronique Vienne, Alissa Walker, Rob Walker, Lorraine Wild, Timothy Young

What is the social impact of design? How do culture and economics shape the objects and spaces we take for granted? How do design objects, designers, producers and consumers interrelate to create experience? How do new networks of communication and technology change the design process? Thoroughly revised, this new edition: explores the iPhone digs deep into the digital with a new chapter on networks and mobile technologies provides a new chapter on studying design culture explores the relationship of design to management and the creative industries supports students with a revamped website and all new exercises This is an essential companion for students of design, the creative industries, visual culture, material culture and sociology.

This is a ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ for the 21st century: an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of what’s wrong with our societies, organizations, ideologies, worldviews and cultures – and how to put them right. The book covers the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economy, sustainability, organizations and society at large.