The Cost of Design UK

Design History Annual Conference 2019: The Cost of Design
Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
5-7 September 2019

‘The Cost of Design’ explores the complexities of the historic and contemporary relationship between design and economy. Design is both influenced by, and can shape, economic systems. Both ‘cost’ and ‘economy’ are to be understood beyond their financial implications. ‘Cost’ is en-visaged as the exchange of resources, meaning or value. The conference looks at how design sustains, accelerates or challenges dominant systems and examines the resulting social, cultur-al, economic or environmental consequences that arise. It examines the roles of design in rap-idly changing economies, examining the relationship between technological advances and the economy. ‘The Cost of Design’ also looks at design’s relationship to the political economy and the global/regional/local exchanges occurring within. Design practices can react to, resist, challenge or seek to influence economies that are viewed to negatively impact in some way. The ways in which design has been used to affect positive change within economic systems will also be examined.
The conference welcomes historic, contemporary and interdisciplinary approaches to the top-ic, and invites contributions from design historians, scholars, and academics in related fields, as well as design practitioners and educators, museum professionals and students.

Topics might include:

Technological and changing economies
·       Impact of automation
·       Digitisation of design culture
·       Hybridisation of physical and virtual spaces

Political economies and global/local exchange
·       Supply chains, manufacture and relocation vis-à-vis geopolitical and cultural borders
·       Challenges to/persistence of dichotomies of North/South; East/West; Centre/Periphery
·       Dynamics of transcultural (intra- or extra regional) design
·       The relationship between design and soft power
·       Appropriation and Copyright

Resistance, sharing economies and design
·       Design for “post-growth” economies
·       Political design in a national/regional/local context
·       Artisanal/craft solutions
·       Indigenous autonomy
·       Designing for wellbeing, happiness and social values

Individual papers of 20 minutes, or proposals for full panels of three papers related to the top-ics listed above or theme of ‘The Cost of Design’ will be considered. Panel proposals must in-clude abstracts for all three papers, in addition to a short description of the panel theme.
All proposals will be double-blind reviewed and selected by the conference committee.

Submissions are due Monday, 25 February 2019 and should:
1.      Be sent in the form of a Microsoft Word document (.doc, .docx)
2.      Not exceed 300 words
3.      Include the title of the paper
4.      Include the author’s full name, title, position and institution
5.      Include a brief professional biography (not exceeding 50 words)
Submissions should be sent to costofdesign.dhs2019@gmail.com to the attention of the Academic Convener.
The Design History Society at https://www.designhistorysociety.org/

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Paris Design Summit

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The relationship between user experience (UX) designers and machine learning (ML) data scientists has emerged as a site for research since 2017. Central to recent findings is the limited ability of UX designers to conceive of new ways to use ML (Yang et al. 2018). This is due to a number of factors. Firstly, human […]

via Designing machine learning — Research Imagining

How to Rent Your Ideas to Fortune 500 Companies

I first met Stephen Key in 2001. Two months later, I used a few recommendations of his — shared over the customary gin tonic — to help a friend double overseas sales in less than two weeks in New Zealand and Australia.

How? Licensing. It can be a beautifully elegant model.

Stephen is somewhat famous in inventing circles for two reasons. First, he consistently earns millions of dollars licensing his ideas to companies like Disney, Nestle, and Coca-Cola. Second, he is fast. It seldom takes him more than three weeks to go from idea to a signed deal.

The Intergalactic Design Guide

“Design has built global brands, disrupted industries, and transformed our lives with technology. It has also contributed to the complex challenges we face today. In The Intergalactic Design Guide, business strategist and designer Cheryl Heller shows how social design can help address our most pressing challenges, from poverty to climate change.

Social design offers a new approach to navigate uncertainty, increase creativity, strengthen relationships, and develop our capacity to collaborate. Innovative leaders like Paul Farmer, Oprah Winfrey, and Marshall Ganz have instinctively practiced social design for decades. Heller has worked with many of these pioneers, observing patterns in their methods and translating them into an approach that can bring new creative energy to any organization. From disrupting the notion of “expert” by seeking meaningful input from many voices to guiding progress through open-ended questions instead of five-year plans, social design changes how humans relate to each other, with powerful positive impacts.

The Intergalactic Design Guide explains eleven common principles, a step-by-step process, and the essential skills for successful social design. Nine in-depth examples—from the CEO of the largest carpet manufacturer in the world to a young entrepreneur with a passion for reducing food waste—illustrate the social design process in action.

Social design is a new kind of creative leadership that generates both traditional and social value, and can change the way we all view our work. Whether you are launching a start-up or managing a global NGO, The Intergalactic Design Guide provides both inspiration and practical steps for designing a more resilient and fulfilling future.”
Visit: Island Press

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The growth and influence that design has on business

With a background in theater and anthropology, design consultant Martha Cotton was right at home on the Design Indaba stage. Her talk probed the audience to think more about the relationship between design and business.

“I feel like we are at a really interesting and crucial moment as a global design community. Because we are at a crossroads, our choice is for people to lean in and cross the path together; or to find it all pretty scary, worry and lean back,” says Cotton.

Cotton, who is a consultant for Fjord North America, also works as a professor at Northwestern University where she teaches design research.

She says of her business clients, “my clients … have started to really look towards the way me and my design colleagues look at the world and solve problems and say we would like to learn to be more like you.”

She gave the Design Indaba audience the challenge of creating a prototype for a concept of their choice. The crowd enjoyed the interactiveness, some coming through with brilliant models and business ideas.

For Cotton, the importance of the exercise was to show the difference in thinking, as many people chose to do the design first, where others thought up a business plan before anything else.

But in the end she showed off the collaborative process between those two fields, mimicking the exact interchange happening between industries right now.

“What you have done is demonstrated the mindsets of a designer, you collaborated, you worked as teams,” she explains.

Adding: “ When you have a collaborative mindset, you actively crave the input and inspiration of those around you and you realize the inputs of you as an individual are less important of the greater whole.”

WATCH HER PROFILE AND VIDEO AT INDABA

 

Media Archaeology – The NeoLucida

“Media archaeology—the tightly interconnected history of visual culture and imaging technologies.”

Design is not only about the future, but about what was created before and dissappeared through the ages.

I found this great and provocative project at Kickstarter:

“The NeoLucida is a 19th-century optical drawing tool updated for the 21st century”

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