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Designing Designing

Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Designing Designing is a groundbreaking exploration of design as a holistic response to life itself. Written by John Chris Jones after a decade of self-critique and reflection, the book challenges conventional, product-focused design methods by embracing an experimental and inclusive approach. Through an eclectic mix of essays, interviews, poems, plays, and photographs, Jones not only discusses design theory but also embodies it within the book's form, presenting design as an ongoing, dynamic practice intertwined with personal, social, and institutional life.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$4399
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This thought-provoking book is ideal for designers, design students, and cultural theorists interested in rethinking design beyond conventional methods. It suits readers who appreciate experimental writing and seek to understand design as a comprehensive practice affecting all aspects of life.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Designing Designing is one of the most extraordinary books on design ever written. First published in 1984 and reprinted with this title and cover in 1991, the book was the product of ten years of auto-critique, reflection, and experimentation on writing on designing.

Offering a savage auto-critique of his own work on "methods", as well as of the wider methods and ends of advanced industrial societies as a whole, this book challenges the traditional product- and progress-oriented focus on design by insisting that the world now coming into being requires designing to be understood as β€˜a response to the whole of life’.

But Designing Designing is also unique in modern design thinking in its exploration of what writing on designing might be. Combining essays, interviews, reflections, performances, plays, poems, chance procedures, photographs, collages, and quotes, Jones experiments with both form and content in an attempt to make a book which β€˜is not simply about designing but is instead itself an instance of the ideas and processes explored within it.’

Series: Radical Thinkers in Design

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    β€œOnce one understands the nature and magnitude of defuturing as the negation of world futures, how one has to account for the history and making of the material world – including design - dramatically changes. Defuturing as our condition forces the generation of a new philosophy of design.” With these thoughts, this book presents a radically new understanding of the...
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    This book brings together Kenneth Frampton’s essays from the 1960s to today, which epitomise his reflections on the historical–theoretical entanglements of architecture with place, the public realm, cultural identity, urban landscape and environment, and the political question of the β€œpredicament” of architecture in the new Millennium. The essays explore Frampton’s contention that architecture’s imperative is to assume a significant responsibility...
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  • Designing Designing
    Designing Designing is one of the most extraordinary books on design ever written. First published in 1984 and reprinted with this title and cover in 1991, the book was the product of ten years of auto-critique, reflection, and experimentation on writing on designing. Offering a savage auto-critique of his own work on "methods", as well as of the wider methods...
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    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
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    The first book to be published on the work of their partnership (in 2001), Design Noir is the essential primary source for understanding the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of Dunne & Raby’s work. Consisting of three elements: a β€˜manifesto’ on the possibilities of designing with and for the β€˜secret life’ of electronic objects; notes for an embryonic network of critical...
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  • The Disobedience of Design
    This volume presents for the first time in English a curated selection of writings by the design thinker Gui Bonsiepe from the 1960s to the present day. Addressing as it does questions of non-Western design and a design practice that is both radical and democratic, Bonsiepe's work has assumed new importance for current debates inspired by global political and environmental...
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Designing Designing has been praised for its profound self-awareness and innovative approach to design theory. Reviews highlight its open-ended and flexible style, contrasting sharply with typical, rigid design methods. The book's unique structure β€” blending essays, reflections, conversations, and poetry β€” exemplifies its experimental ethos. Critics commend its foresight and its capacity to inspire designers to critically engage with the complexities and societal impacts of design.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781350070677

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 25 February 2021

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts

Audience: Tertiary education

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 20.0mm

Width: 156.0mm

Height: 216.0mm

Weight: 699g

Pages: 440

About the Author

John Chris Jones was born in 1927, in Aberystwyth, Wales. Jones studied engineering at the University of Cambridge, and went on to work for AEI in Manchester, England. In 1962 he instigated an influential conference on design methods, which led to the formation of the Design Research Society which he chaired from 1971-73. In 2004 he was presented with the Society's Lifetime Achievement Award and from 1970-74 Jones was the first Professor of Design at The Open University, UK.

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