Call for Papers: M/C Journal. Special Issue: ‘Design’
Editors: Nicole Sully, Timothy O’Rourke, and Andrew Wilson (University of Queensland)
Between its broader sense of intent and that of making a drawing or plan, design appears to be expanding in both meaning and its application. Design is well understood when related to our material culture, where the medium often bears the imprint of the designer/s. Design has moved relatively seamlessly from the physical into the digital world. It makes sense that someone designs the applications that we use and that digital content, just as much as a poster, requires design. Design activities are rarely inseparable from a market economy, but the language of design has infiltrated business more broadly. Design processes are used in seemingly novel ways across business and governments seeking to improve their digital and real-world services. New usage related to users, perhaps unknowingly, replicates the interests of designers in the 1960s who sought a more equitable solutions to social problems experienced in the physical world. What loosely unites these disparate design disciplines diachronically and today is a shared sense that design improves the world we live in. But even with the best intentions, design does not inevitably lead to a better world. Our desire for stuff, and the social status this might bring, has helped to elevate designers into celebrities, but also heightened distinctions between the copy and the original. Design, either analogue or digital, has unintended consequences. These include, among other examples, the environmental degradation that emerges from design consumption through to the carbon footprint of the digital world.
This issue of M/C Journal seeks to critique design across its range of disciplines. Contributors are encouraged to engage critically with varied senses of design as method, practice and product, examining your own disciplines and research interests. The editors welcome papers that explore, but are not limited to:
- Cross-cultural design
- Design cultures
- Design disciplines
- Design economy
- Design evaluation
- Design methods
- Design politics
- Equitable design
- Indigenous design
- Over-design
- Regulating design
- Theories of design
- Unintentional design
Prospective contributors should email an abstract of 100-250 words and a brief biography to the issue editors via design@journal.media-culture.org.au. Abstracts should include the article title and should describe your research question, approach, and argument. Biographies should be about three sentences (maximum 75 words) and should include your institutional affiliation and research interests.
Articles should be 3000 words (plus bibliography) and submitted via journal website. All articles will be double-blind refereed and must adhere to MLA style (6th edition). Please refer to the journal website for Author Guidelines.
Details
- Article deadline: 11 June 2021
- Release date: 11 Aug. 2021
- Editors: Nicole Sully, Timothy O’Rourke, and Andrew Wilson
For more information please visit the journal website.