Since the 1990s, in response to dramatic transformations in the worlds of technology and the economy, design – a once relatively definable discipline, complete with a set of subdisciplines – has become unrecognizable. Consequently, design scholars have begun to address new issues, themes and sub-disciplines such as: sustainable design, design for well-being, empathic design, design activism, design anthropology, and many more. The Routledge Companion to Design Studies charts this new expanded spectrum and embraces the wide range of scholarship relating to design – theoretical, practice-related and historical – that has emerged over the past four decades. Comprising forty-three newly commissioned chapters, the Companion is organized into the following six sections: Defining design: discipline, process Defining design: objects, spaces Designing identities: gender, sexuality, age, nation Designing society: empathy, responsibility, consumption, the everyday Design and politics: activism, intervention, regulation Designing the world: globalization, transnationalism, translation. Contributors include both established and emerging scholars and the chapters offer an international scope, covering work emanating from, and relating to, design in the United Kingdom, mainland Europe, North America, Asia, Australasia and Africa. This comprehensive collection makes an original and significant contribution to the field of Design Studies.

Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION Penny Sparke PART ONE Defining Design: Discipline, Process Penelope Dean Free For All Jilly Traganou Wall Street Bounded and Unbinding: The Spatial as a Multifocal Lens in Design Studies Alison Prendiville Connectivity Through Service Design Louise Valentine A Curious Journey into an Unknown World Christopher Boyko, Yi Chang Lee, Rachel Cooper, Design Decision Making Lois Weinthal Drawing the Dotted Line Janice Helland The Craft and Design of Dressmaking, 1880 -1907 PART TWO Defining Design: Objects, Spaces Robert Friedel Artifice, Materials and the Choices of Design Paul Atkinson Writing the Design History of Computers Victoria Kelley Keeping it on the Surface: Design, Surfaces and Taste Trevor Keeble Table Stories: History, Meaning and Narrative in Contemporary Homemaking Marilyn Cohen Wall Street(s) Viviana Narotzky Beyond Perfection. Object and process in twenty-first century design and material culture PART THREE Designing Identities: Gender, Sexuality, Age, Nation Christopher Breward Modern Dressing: the suit as practice and symbol Penny Sparke Arranging the Aspidistras: nature, culture and the design of the feminine sphere in the nineteenth century John Potvin From Bright Young Thing to Vile Body to Posthumous Reliquary: Stephen Tennant, queer excess and the decadent interior Amy F. Ogata Designing Childhood Noel Waite Futures Fairs: Industrial exhibitions in New Zealand 1865-1925 Paul Hazell A Difficult Road: Designing a post-colonial car for Africa Jeremy Aynsley The Cultural Representation of Graphic Design in East and West Germany, 1949 to 1970 Kjetil Fallan A Match Made in Utopia: the uneasy love affair of art and industry in Scandinavia PART FOUR Designing Society: Empathy, Responsibility, Consumption, the Everyday Barbara Penner From Ergonomics to Empathy: Herman Miller and MetaForm Deana McDonagh How Products Satisfy Needs Beyond the Functional: empathy supporting consumer-product relationships Joseph McBrinn Refashioning disability: the case of Painted Fabrics Ltd, 1915-1959 Rama Gheerawo Socially Inclusive Design: a people-centred perspective Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe What is "Socially Responsive Design and Innovation"? Ming Cheung Use Experience Design in Digital Service Information Prasad Boradkar Design + Anthropology: An Emergent Discipline Ben Highmore Design, Daily Life and Matters of Taste PART FIVE Design and Politics: Activism, Intervention, Regulation Tony Fry Configuring Design as Politics Now Alison J. Clarke Design for the Real World: Victor Papanek and the Emergence of Humane Design Eeva Berglund Impossible Maybe, Perhaps Quite Likely: Activist design in Helsinki’s urban wastelands Stuart Walker Design for Meaningful Innovation Rebecca Reubens Towards Holistic Sustainability Design: The Rhizome Approach Fiona Fisher Regulating Design: Spaces and Boundaries of the Late Nineteenth-Century Public House PART SIX Designing the World: Globalization, Transnationalism, Translation Victor Margolin A World History of Design Grace Lees-Maffei "Why Then the World’s my Oyster": Consumption and Globalization, 1851 to now Meltem O Gürel Designing and Consuming the Modern in Turkey Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz Three Dutchnesses of Dutch Design: The Construction of a National Practice at the Intersection of National and International Dynamics Tanishka Kachru The Staging of Indian National Identity Through Exhibitions, 1850-1947 Elise Hodson Exhibiting Independent India: Textiles and Ornamental Arts at the Museum of Modern Art in New York Christine Guth Design before Design in Japan Yuko Kikuchi The Cold War Design Business of John D. Rockefeller 3rd