An A to Z of Contemporary Design¹

¹In 2001, Hal Foster wrote his paper “The ABCs of Contemporary Design*” as a supplement (part glossary, part guide) to his book Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes). We suggest readers see this paper as a much more focused view of the disciplines of design than Foster’s ABCs supplement.

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ In 2001, Hal Foster wrote his paper “The ABCs of Contemporary Design*” as a supplement (part glossary, part guide) to his book Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes). We suggest readers see this paper as a much more focused view of the disciplines of design than Foster’s ABCs supplement.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Rodgers

Paul Rodgers is Professor of Design Issues at Northumbria University, UK. He has had a distinguished and extensive career in design research. Prior to joining Northumbria University in 2009, he was Reader in Design at Edinburgh Napier University (1999–2009) and a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Engineering Design Centre (1996–1999). He has over 20 years’ of experience in product design research and has led several research projects for Research Councils in the UK and design projects funded by the Scottish Government and The Lighthouse (Scotland’s National Centre for Architecture, Design and the City). He is the author of more than 130 papers and eight books, including The Routledge Companion to Design Research (2014). With Craig Bremner, he has recently been commissioned by Bloomsbury/Berg Publishers, London to write a new book entitled Design School: Education, Research and Practice Beyond Disciplines, which will be published in 2016. His current research explores the discipline of design and how disruptive design interventions can enact positive change in health and social care and elsewhere.

Craig Bremner

Craig Bremner is jointly Professor of Design at Charles Sturt University and the University of Southern Denmark. Prior to this he was Professor in Design Pedagogy at Northumbria University, UK, and before that Professor of Design at the University of Canberra, where he was also Dean of the Faculty of Design & Architecture. He holds a BA in Literature (UWA), a Masters in Design (Domus Academy, Milan) and a PhD (RMIT). His research deals with developing methods to discover how and why we don’t know much about the experience of design, as well as finding ways to clarify the reason why ‘not-knowing’ is an essential and valuable beginning point of practice. Some applications of his research methods have traced the experience of living in Glasgow, using banks and driving motorcars. In his private practice he has curated design exhibitions in Australia, the USA, and Japan, and he has worked as a designer in Italy, Scotland and Australia.