Aimed at students of design studies, design history, cultural studies and sociology, this book offers an overview of design practice in contemporary culture and society. It investigates the interactions of design producers and consumers. It includes a series of illustrative case studies.

Praise for the first edition: `Julier provides an important contemporary account of how design disciplines act and interact in the world.... an important resource for the student of design... perfection as a cultural studies text′ - European Journal of Cultural Studies Aimed at students of design studies, design history, cultural studies and sociology, The Culture of Design, offers a unique overview of design practice in contemporary culture and society. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, Julier nevertheless foregrounds the everyday business and professional context in which designers work. The second edition of The Culture of Design, has been thoroughly revised and updated, and contains new case studies, including one on the iPod. In addition, the book now has a new introductory chapter that outlines academic approaches to ′design culture′ and an extended final chapter which looks at the links between design and management studies and how the creative industries function in the context of urban regeneration and social participation.

Design culture foregrounds the relationships between the domains of design practice, design production and everyday life. Unlike design history and design studies, it is primarily concerned with contemporary design objects and the networks between the multiple actors engaged in their shaping, functioning and reproduction. It acknowledges the rise of design as both a key component and a key challenge of the modern world. Featuring an impressive range of international case studies, Design Culture interrogates what this emergent discipline is, its methodologies, its scope and its relationships with other fields of study. The volume's interdisciplinary approach brings fresh thinking to this fast-evolving field of study.

The Culture of Nature in the History of Design confronts the dilemma caused by design’s pertinent yet precarious position in environmental discourse through interdisciplinary conversations about the design of nature and the nature of design. Demonstrating that the deep entanglements of design and nature have a deeper and broader history than contemporary discourse on sustainable design and ecological design might imply, this book presents case studies ranging from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century and from Singapore to Mexico. It gathers scholarship on a broad range of fields/practices, from urban planning, landscape architecture, and architecture, to engineering design, industrial design, furniture design and graphic design. From adobe architecture to the atomic bomb, from the bonsai tree to Biosphere 2, from pesticides to photovoltaics, from rust to recycling – the culture of nature permeates the history of design. As an activity and a profession always operating in the borderlands between human and non-human environments, design has always been part of the environmental problem, whilst also being an indispensable part of the solution. The book ventures into domains as diverse as design theory, research, pedagogy, politics, activism, organizations, exhibitions, and fiction and trade literature to explore how design is constantly making and unmaking the environment and, conversely, how the environment is both making and unmaking design. This book will be of great interest to a range of scholarly fields, from design education and design history to environmental policy and environmental history.

Design Culture is an account of what lies behind the design of anything, from a chair to a website. It examines the many aspects of culture that shaped design in the past, still shape it today and will go on shaping it in the future. The book is intended for designers and their clients, and indeed for anyone who uses design and buys objects and services. This is a special book about design. Instead of talking breathlessly about designers, going into raptures over individual styles or artefacts, or focusing on particular fields of design (that are only interesting to people who work in them), the book talks about design overall, how it comes about and what important preconditions it needs. Design Culture contains many illustrations, and its witty and sardonic style helps to make the many and varied causes that underlie design easier to understand. SANS WATER. This is a compact book. You can read it in one evening yet it will take much more time to digest. FACTS, FACTS, FACTS. Every trend covered is illustrated with at least one case and usually more. EASY COMPLEXITY. The field of design is ginormous, yet the trends are simple enough (if you know them). PLEASANT TO READ. The book itself is carefully crafted for Kindle. Read everywhere, on any device you own. All of us are a connected with design. Even if we not designers themselves, we do buy and consume products of design. To do that well takes a culture and this book is precisely about that culture, the Culture of Design.

The Design Culture Reader brings together a rich and diverse selection of texts for the purpose of re-imagining the study of design for the 21st Century.