Special Issue of Artifact: The Design Concept Anthology (March 2014)

Deadline for submissions: 3 March 2014
Website: http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/artifact/information/authors

Back in the 1990’s, the graphic designer Bruce Mau proclaimed that “everything is design.” However, when everything is design, nothing is design. This inherently contradictory nature of Mau’s statement enabled it to be read as a provocation as well as a promotion of the design concept. Today the echo from back then sounds hopelessly antiquated: the field has expanded to a state of formless dissolution and it is now commonplace to understand design as if not everything, then something close. The design concept is topical and trendy, it is discussed and used in a great many areas and in manifold ways; when it comes to content as well as scale the concept covers countless subjects, places, objects, and processes.

This expansion of the design discipline brings up a series of questions:

• What does the concept “design” mean today?
• How has the design concept developed in line with its success, and has the professional practice of designers changed with it?
• Why is “design” trendy exactly now?
• What impact does it have on society at large that complex social processes have become a matter of design? What impact does this have on the design discipline?
• What does it tell us about the time we live in that the concept of design is changing?

There is every reason to investigate the concept as it appears in various contexts. This investigation, however, has a special motivation. Centered as it is at The Danish Design School, situated at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, it brings the relationship between design education, the design discipline and the broader societal horizon in focus. The Danish Design School has changed with the changing design concept as have many design schools the world over. The school’s students are introduced to a variety of ideas about design, between objects and processes, craft and artistic development, practical skills and academic teaching etc. The ideas that the school teaches will determine the professional lives of the students when they become practicing designers and their design practices will in turn change the concept of design.

The anthology will appear in the open access journal Artifact; it will be used for teaching as well as for debating the concept of design in a wider societal context.

Your article should be submitted by Monday, March 3rd, 2014.

It can be written as either a traditional academic article or in the form of an essay or manifesto with personal observations on the subject. All articles will be submitted to double blind peer review. The maximum length should not exceed 5.000 words excluding abstract and references. Your article should be submitted to our web site – please go to http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/artifact/information/authors.

For further instructions on the format of your paper, please see http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/artifact/about/submissions#authorGuidelines.

Kirsten Marie Raahauge, Lead Guest Editor, kmr@kadk.dk
Ida Engholm, ie@kadk.dk
Troels Degn Johansson, tdj@kadk.dk
Maria Mackinney-Valentin, mmk@kadk.dk

About Artifact

Artifact is focused on practice-based design research and aims to explore conditions, issues and tasks pertaining to design development in a broad sense. The main emphasis of the journal is on aspects of design development concerning proposals, form-giving and conceptualization, which ties into a range of topics such as strategic design, design thinking, design innovation, design method and process, among others.

The journal is cross-disciplinary in scope and thus welcomes contributions from all design disciplines, including product design and graphic communication, IT and service design as well as organization design and design management.

Artifact publishes academic articles, short research notes, review articles, and essays. Academic articles and research notes are vetted in a double-blind review process.

We send out several calls for contributions each year. In addition, we welcome unsolicited contributions.

See also: http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/artifact/