I am currently rereading Glen Parsons’ “The Philosophy of Design”. This is a collection of quotes and notes, continuously updated as I read the book. When I first read this book in 2019, I really liked its down-to-earth approach that is thorough, but not overly pompous like a lot of design theory writing by academic designers is. {{toc}} (§ Why designers should be interested in a philosophy of…
I am currently reading Aneta Pavlenko’s “The Bilingual Mind And What It Tells Us About Language and Thought”. This is a collection of quotes and notes, continuously updated as I read the book. The book surveys what we know about the relationship between language and thought. In addition to outlining and critiquing the historical development of the field of study, Pavlenko rigorously reviews and…
Having read a few books by David Graeber, his 2015 publication “The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy” has remained my favorite, particularly because it is a quick and easy read — it consists of three essays of medium length and it is written in a very colloquial style. However rereading it after a few years (I read it for the first time in 2017 and…
Boot Boyz Biz is a bootleg fashion label from Chicago, now based in New York. Subverting copyright laws, their designs, collaged from snippets taken from books or the depths of the internet, incorporate and quote a huge amount of eclectic sources — often in a single visual. They are usually accompanied by blog posts, exploring the people and subjects referenced in the visuals in depth. Their…
The “Dynamic Medium Group” led by Bret Victor which is developing “ Dynamicland ” is much admired and widely watched in the interaction design community. Yet the information about their work is closely-guarded and usually only available in a highly moderated form. The work of ethnographer Götz Bachmann, who spent much time with the group to observe them, offers a new perspective and deep insight…
In his 2006 book “The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design” Klaus Krippendorff , who studied at HfG Ulm under Horst Rittel and went on to teach at the Annenberg School for Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the University of Pennsylvania for more than forty years, writes about the “Trajectory of Artificiality”. Rather than reducing design problems to “products”, we should also look at the…
Jane Jacobs’ 1961 classic “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” is a heartfelt, but outstandingly rational defense of cities — written by someone who sincerely loves them — against megalomaniac designers clinging to utopian visions of cities that are aesthetically clean, yet bear no resemblance to what actually makes cities attractive in real life. Jacobs urges the urban planners of her…