Global Design History

Globalism is often discussed using abstract terms, such as ‘networks’ or ‘flows’ and usually in relation to recent history. Global Design History moves us past this limited view of globalism, broadening our sense of this key term in history and theory. Individual chapters focus our attention on objects, and the stories they can tell us about cultural interactions on a global scale. They place these concrete things into contexts, such as trade, empire, mediation, and various forms of design practice. Among the varied topics included are: the global underpinnings of Renaissance material culture the trade of Indian cottons in the eighteenth-century the Japanese tea ceremony as a case of ‘import substitution’ German design in the context of empire handcrafted modernist furniture in Turkey Australian fashions employing ‘ethnic’ motifs an experimental UK-Ghanaian design partnership Chinese social networking websites the international circulation of contemporary architects. Featuring work from leading design historians, each chapter is paired with a ‘response’, designed to expand the discussion and test the methodologies on offer. An extensive bibliography and resource guide will also aid further research, providing students with a user friendly model for approaches to global design. Global Design History will be useful for upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students, academics and researchers in design history and art history, and related subjects such as anthropology, craft studies and cultural geography.

A survey of spectacular breadth, covering the history of decorative arts and design worldwide over the past six hundred years

This text examines the possibilities for scaling design solutions to global warming. The featured projects showcase leading-edge design innovations at multiple scales.

'Local Histories/Global Designs' is an extended argument about the '"coloniality' of power. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, Walter Mignolo points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies.

For centuries now, visual communication design has celebrated national identities (through the now-iconic identity systems developed for the Olympic Games, for example) at the same time as it transcends international borders, such as through the far-reaching influence of the Bauhaus and the International Typographic Style. Today, of course, such transcendence is easier than ever. In an era of nearly instantaneous global access, enabled by increasingly ubiquitous wireless connections, the world seems very small. Presented in five languages—English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish—Graphic Design, Translated is a reflection of the increasingly international nature of visual communication design. Illustrated with examples from around the globe, the book is a compilation of more than 200 of the profession’s most common terms, culled from a broad range of categories: design history, printing and paper, typography, digital technology, and general design practice. All of which makes this volume an essential reference for students, practitioners, clients–indeed, anybody interested in the global scope of today’s visual communication design.

This innovative volume brings together international design scholars to address the history and present-day status of national and international design organizations, working across design disciplines and located in countries including Argentina, Turkey, Estonia, Switzerland, Italy, China and the USA. In the second half of the 20th century, many non-governmental organizations were created to address urgent cultural, economic and welfare issues. Design organizations set out to create an international consensus for the future direction of design. This included enhancing communication between professionals, educators and practitioners, raising standards for design, and creating communities of designers across linguistic, national and political borders. Shared needs and agendas were identified and categories of design constantly defined and re-defined, often with overt cultural and political intents. Drawing on an impressive range of original research, archival sources and oral testimony, this volume questions the aims and achievements of national and international design organizations in light of their subsequent histories and their global remits. The Cold War period is central to the book, while many chapters draw on post-colonial perspectives to interpret how transnational networks and negotiations took place at events and congresses, and through publication.

This volume surveys the ways in which our globalized world has manifested itself in design since ca 1970, and the ways in which design has evolved to serve a globalized world. The point of departure is a conception of design which encompasses architecture, graphics, the media, fashion, product and industrial design, as well as the shaping of the manmade environment and of production processes. The focus is on the formation of global networks in the areas of communication, production, commerce, finance, and mobility. The diverse phenomena of globalization are visualized through film, products, clothing, images, and models by well-known artists such as Armin Linke, Fischli Weiss, Didier Faustino, and Thomas Demand. Alongside the shipping container, an indispensable element of globalization, the presentation provides insights into cultural transfer both in the present day and historically, and presents globalization in relationship to regionalism as well as to worldwide trends.

From consumer products to architecture to advertising to digital technology, design is an undeniably global phenomenon. Yet despite their professed transnational perspective, historical studies of design have all too often succumbed to a bias toward Western, industrialized nations. This diverse but rigorously curated collection recalibrates our understanding of design history, reassessing regional and national cultures while situating them within an international context. Here, contributors from five continents offer nuanced studies that range from South Africa to the Czech Republic, all the while sensitive to the complexities of local variation and the role of nation-states in identity construction.