Design theory Posts
Consumption: six myths to discard
An article for the Fair Design conference, Warsaw, Poland, May 2018
‘Ethical’ design – or the ethic of progress?
Years ago, I saw the great US graphic design writer Stephen Heller address a big crowd of students in London.
Read the full article...Publicly funded design support for SME manufacturers
Over the years, governments have put very little money into supporting product design among SMEs. Here’s a review of the results of their work.
Read the full article...The fuzzy front end of product design projects
In innovation, the simple transfer of knowledge isn’t enough – but uncertainty isn’t all bad
Read the full article...Design alone can’t save UK plc
Making products attractive and user-friendly is a good idea, but it is no substitute for R&D and investment.
Read the full article...Smart Design: rethinking packaging
How electronic packs for pharmaceuticals work with mobile IT to improve patient adherence to medication regimens
Read the full article...The craze for design thinking
The historical and social reasons why hip designers talk of little else. Plus: elements of an alternative.
Read the full article...The Next Trend in Design
Given the alacrity with which design managers uphold and then forget about future trends, it’s worth asking: Where do such trends really come from?
Read the full article...What’s so special about Dutch design?
In design one doesn’t necessarily accept ‘the problem as given’.
Read the full article...Innovation is more than just design; a reply to Virginia Postrel
Early on in her 2003 book The Substance of Style (HarperCollins) Virginia Postrel celebrates our old friend, the Apple iMac.
Read the full article...Toward the global concept
Twenty years ago, design was just beginning today’s upswing – but the US had clearly begun to regain its worldwide prominence in the field
Read the full article...Political economy: the survival kit for designers in the 1980s
This article was the first leader published under my editorship at Design magazine (1979-82). For all its narrowness and youthful excess, it marked out new territory for thinking about design
Read the full article...
Details in this Sunday Times article are extraordinary but unsurprising: Seems the PUBLIC are seen as a problematic threat to be managed/manipulated. Surely CPS impartiality is compromised by this decision? Read on...
1.6GW total from wind and solar this morning, from a total of ~45GW installed capacity. We're keeping the lights on by burning trees and gas. Nukes and reliance upon interconnectors making up the difference. No chance we can hit Net Zero grid by 2030.
“Mother Nature is in charge, and so we must make sure we adjust”.
Ex-cop Democratic Party mayor, indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges, supported by Trump and critical of antisemitism, tells people to tighten their... throats.
What a mess! https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/02/new-york-water-shortage?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
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Bookmarks
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls