Histories of Design Pedagogy Virtual Spe

Journal of Design History Advance Access published June 15, 2016
doi:10.1093/jdh/epw014
Journal of Design History Histories of Design Pedagogy Virtual
Special Issue for Journal of Design
History
Maya Oppenheimer
‘Histories of Design Pedagogy’ gathers material from across three decades of the Journal
of Design History to juxtapose distinct investigations into design education across various
geographies, contexts, relationships and methodological concerns. By isolating three
overarching themes to structure twelve articles, this introduction also makes an argument
towards future design pedagogy, suggesting an Urmodell, or master plan, of elements
in design pedagogy that is informed by key issues debated by and through the articles
Downloaded from http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on June 17, 2016

presented. ‘Design Systems and Projects’ addresses the meaning and concept of design,
relationships between education and industry, and design training networks. ‘Ethics
and Methods’ advocates greater attention to the identities, subjectivities and roles of
the designer and of the user as stakeholders in a designed system, the increasing role of
research in design practice, elements that affect practice from global design to emerging
technologies, and object collections research. The inal theme, ‘Critical Histories and
Theories’, looks to changes in design history and design studies to inform interdisciplinary
scholarship and the future of design practice. Tensions over proportions, boundaries and
structures are addressed by this Urmodell, but in the preferred deinition of modelling as a
mediator, it exists here as a malleable framework over a steadfast solution.
Keywords: design education—design history—epistemology—pedagogy—schools of design
Contents
Design Systems and Projects: Training, Industry, Art
and Design
1 Stana Nenadic, ‘Designers in the Nineteenth-Century Scottish Fancy Textile Indus-
try: Education, Employment and Exhibition’, Journal of Design History 27, no. 2
(2014): 115–130
2 Daniela N. Prina, ‘Design in Belgium before Art Nouveau: Art, Industry and the
Reform of Artistic Education in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’, Jour-
nal of Design History 23, no. 4 (2010): 329–350
3 Alain Findeli, ‘Design Education and Industry: the Laborious Beginnings of the Insti-
tute of Design in Chicago in 1944’, Journal of Design History 4, no. 2 (1991): 97–113
4 Susan Bittker, ‘[Education] Report on a Survey of Recent Crafts and Design Gradu-
ates of Scottish Art Colleges’, Journal of Design History 2, nos 2–3 (1989): 219–228
Ethics and Methods: Structures and Experiences of Design

© The Author [2016]. Published by
Pedagogy
Oxford University Press on behalf
of The Design History Society. All
5 Artemis Yagou, ‘First Steps: Early Design Education and Professionalization in
rights reserved. Greece', Journal of Design History 23, no. 2 (2010): 145–161
1
6 Anna Rowland, ‘Business Management at the Weimar Bauhaus', Journal of Design
History 1, no. 3–4 (1988): 153–175
7 Heiner Jacob, ‘HfG Ulm: A Personal View of an Experiment in Democracy and
Design Education’, Journal of Design History 1, nos 3–4 (1998): 221–234
8 David Mulberg, ‘[Education] “Just Don’t Ask Me to Deine It”: Perceptions of Technol-
ogy in the National Curriculum’, Journal of Design History 6, no. 4 (1993): 301–305
9 Jane Pavitt, ‘[Archives and Collections] The Camberwell Collection of Applied Arts,
Camberwell College of Arts, The London Institute’, Journal of Design History 10,
no. 2 (1997), 225–229
Critical Histories and heories: Turns and Articulations in

Design History and Design Studies
10 Victoria Newhouse, ‘Margot Wittkower: Design Education and Practice, Berlin–
London, 1919–1939’, Journal of Design History 3, nos 2–3 (1990): 83–101
11 Jilly Traganou, ‘[re: focus design] Architectural and Spatial Design Studies: Inscribing

Architecture in Design Studies’, Journal of Design History 22, no. 2 (2009): 173–181
12 Sarah A. Lichtman, ‘Reconsidering the History of Design Survey’, Journal of De-
sign History 22, no. 4 (2009): 341–350
Introduction: Histories of Design Pedagogy

The process by which forms are made, and the forms themselves, embody values
and standards of behavior, which affect large numbers of people and every aspect
of our lives. It is this integral relationship between individual creativity and social
responsibility that draws me to the design arts.
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville1
It seems to me that the most important thing that we have to do is improve the
state of education in our schools. We’ve got to insert some level of culture, some
level of history, some level of philosophy. Without that, we will have just a continu-
ous stream of little designers and craftspersons, or paste-up people at best. We
need to provide a cultural structure to our professions.
Massimo Vignelli2
Research into histories of design pedagogy uncovers a spectrum of debates cantilevered

around reform. What sustains this discourse of teaching and learning is an alchemy of
politics, geography, culture and social history. The proportions of these elements shift
depending on the agenda of whoever is advocating for improvements of educational
institutions, resulting in a web of calls for change, disagreements over how said change
should manifest and attempts to deine a quicksilver pedagogical ield. Pedagogy, like
design and like design history, is the sum of epistemological, historiographic and cul-
tural beliefs. Design is not an easy term to deine, nor are the contours of its education,
particularly at a time when the values and pathways of design training are so multifari-
ous and under pressure. But then again, is this not always the vanguard for design,
making it an extremely dynamic area of activity?
Design pedagogy is also a conversation about design practice. How we train students
today will steward and inluence future practice. This, in turn, affects our daily lives, as
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville points out above. As a graphic designer and design educa-
tor, de Bretteville’s position on design comes at a particular social and cultural moment
Histories of Design Pedagogy

2
in the United States. Written in 1972 while teaching at the California Institute of the
Arts (later the California College of the Arts) and the Los Angeles-based Woman’s
Building, she explains her practice and concept of design as part of an effort to ‘locate,
create and use positive modes which reject the repressive elements of dominant cul-
ture’.3 Feminism inluenced her design awareness, her work and her teaching, and
she advocated design that was inclusive over exclusive, personal over universal and
complex over simple. To instil these principles in practice, pedagogy should follow suit.
This is where de Bretteville’s comments on design arts pairs with Massimo Vignelli’s. His
suggestion would not only result in an improvement of design education but also an
improvement in our professional ranks. This too involves culture and a critical aware-
ness won of rigorous study and consideration of philosophy and history. Designers
must interrogate, resituate and contemplate.
A double epigraph for a dual task: de Bretteville and Vignelli foreshadow the themes
presented in this virtual special issue for Journal of Design History (JDH) and encapsulate
the spirit in which it was compiled. Both quotations are drawn from lectures delivered to
design students and educators and both were uttered by practising designers who had

strong ideas regarding design, design pedagogy and what constitutes sound, profes-
sional practice. They both advocate critical consideration of culture, history, ethics and
method, in balance with the design system or project at hand. These ingredients, when
embedded in pedagogical practice, improve design and enhance future cultural life.
Since its irst issue in 1988, the JDH has published a broad spectrum of contributions
to design history: research methodologies, typologies, case studies and surveys of con-
stituencies of design, as well as social, cultural, political and post-colonial histories, to
name a few. A virtual special issue on histories of design pedagogy is an important
addition to the portfolio of the JDH but also to the agenda of the afiliated Design
History Society (DHS). Both of these bodies have played an important role in the emer-
gence of design history as an academic ield of inquiry, a history I discuss later on.
The twelve articles presented in this issue were selected from back issues of the JDH
because they address particular debates, interests and contexts in the history of design
pedagogy that inform the shape of present and future practice.
In addition to highlighting the speciic role of the JDH and the DHS in the history of
design, this issue is especially timely due to a range of anniversaries of societies and
courses related to design and design history education. ‘40 Years On: The Domain of
Design History—Looking Back Looking Forward’, a conference hosted at Milton Keynes
in May 2015, hosted several scholars involved in the early stages of design history’s
development as a discipline and its curriculum in higher education. The Design Research
Society’s iftieth anniversary conference proceedings at the University of Brighton in
2016 also considers histories of design research, to better understand present debates
as well as emerging pedagogical approaches. The continued growth of these scholarly
constituencies has also increased the number of attempts, and some would argue, the
need, to deine and assess their own remits as well as that of design.
References to ‘design’ are increasingly lucrative. With present connotations of luxury

and desirability, lifestyle magazines, boutiques and brands are equating the adjective
‘designer’ with exclusivity. A rise in appropriating design thinking in business, market-
ing and disruptive innovation turns design into a magpie concept that approaches
the very kind of practice many designers have long since warned against. ‘The main
idea’ of design thinking, explains Lucy Kimbell, ‘is that the ways professional design-
ers problem-solve is of value to irms that try to innovate and to societies trying to
make change happen’.4 As a resource for organizations or in a ‘cognitive style’ with
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3
loose general theory, the fashion of design thinking as it enters management academia
and buzz-speak in innovation circles ignores the diversity of thinking and training that
makes design practices effective tools for stewarding change. Misleading design think-
ing can ignore pedagogical principles that require time, which a culture of disrup-
tion cannot allow; examples can include relexive, inclusive and critical frameworks, let
alone experimentation. It can also generalize across disparate methods and practices of
design. The rhetoric of design thinking is very exciting, but it must also be responsible.
Victor Papanek reminded designers of their responsibility not to heed ‘market-oriented,

proit-driven’ systems in his decades old but ever-relevant Design for the Real World.5
Ken Garland’s 1963 manifesto, with its call for graphic designers to avoid caving in to
‘inconsequential commercial work’, was re-instated and updated: ‘First Things First
Manifesto 2000’ appeared—with a new list of signatories— in 1999 in Adbusters and
inluential design magazines across the world.6 These texts, and the principles they
communicate, are hugely important as debates for students, and as design becomes
increasingly massaged into strategies to sell, how we teach design practice; the histories
we look to and critical questions we ask should also rise in direct correlation.

Such relexive questioning keeps design college education relevant in a market where
consumers can teach themselves to use digital tools, or where short courses teach the
basics in developing product design and brand management skills online. We have the
tools to disrupt markets and make proit, but should we and what does it mean to do
so? At the same time, students encounter and expect customer service-like resources
within the college or university. In a changing consumer landscape, considering design
via how it is and has been communicated to students lends invaluable insight into our
hopes for design education and our future.
This brings me to a fourth reason to consider design pedagogy here: while design-
related industries grow, they inluence job markets, gross domestic products and global
trade. The Creative Industries Economic Estimates for January 2015 released by the
UK Department for Culture Media & Sport reports employment statistics and gross
value added igures for ‘those industries which have their origin in individual creativity,
skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the
generation and exploitation of intellectual property’. This includes design. In 2013, the
creative industries accounted for 1.71 million jobs in 2013. This igure grew by 3.9 %
annually between 1997 and 2013, resulting in a gross value added igure of £76.9 bil-
lion, or 5.0 % of the UK economy as a whole.7
I use the UK as an example case here because it is the base for the JDH, and the UK
example also relects a scenario experienced in other countries: design is lucrative.
However, how will cuts to higher education, and proposed implementations of new
budgetary constraints, proliferating excellence frameworks, fewer contracted teach-
ing positions and increasing student numbers paying unprecedented fees, affect the
education of future designers? Will the lucrative industry support or advocate stable
investment in education, and who will have access to this training?
What is design pedagogy?

Examining design pedagogy allows educators, designers and design historians to
assess their ields by looking critically and relexively at how pedagogy is communi-
cated and affected over time. This exercise should extend outside higher education
to continuing education, public beneit and collections-based institutions, as well as

4
to younger generations. It also requires an acceptance and ownership of exposed
biases and subjectivities. As Sarah A. Lichtman points out in her article about design
history surveys, discussed later, what we teach and how ‘rests on differing epis-
temological, pedagogical and historiographical assumptions’.8 Design discourse,
including survey courses, studio briefs and professional practice, include all these
inluencers. This is not a negative aspect, but it is a challenge when educators call
for consensus, deinitions and distinctions within design pedagogy. Interpretations
of design are becoming ever more diverse, as well as views on who designs and
what the process means. This includes debates surrounding ethics, resources and
power, to name a few.
Identifying and debating histories of design pedagogy allow professionals (including

studio as well as academic practitioners and policy advocates) to understand, analyse
and develop how we support students in their learning and why: we can ask ourselves
the ‘So What?’ of the rigorous crit. This begets epistemological clarity for students as
well as for staff. It also informs the trajectory of a disciplinary pursuit and culture of
practice. This process must be constant. Previous publications on pedagogy tend to

take a historical survey of key schools, reformers and educators. A well-known example
is the writing of the late David Thistlewood, former president of the National Society
for Education in Art & Design (NSEAD) and editor of the International Journal on Art
and Design Education. His edited volume, Histories of Art and Design Education: From
Cole to Coldstream, chronicles various societies, institutes and reform initiatives, begin-
ning with Henry Cole (art and design as a strategic economic necessity) and ending
with Sir William Coldstream (art and design worthy of study for its own sake). Another
collection of essays, edited by Mervyn Romans, Histories of Art and Design Education,
concedes the rarity of such publications in Britain and acknowledges continuity with
Thistlewood’s earlier contribution. Romans’ book contains essays on formal training
and drawing, public education and taste, education and the institution, professionali-
zation and inluential igures and groups in British education. Finally, The History and
Philosophy of Art Education by Stuart Macdonald offers another chronological view
of European art and design education. First published in 1970 and reissued in 2004,
Macdonald begins his study with guilds, academies and societies before the industrial
revolution. The monograph that follows is a history of change in curriculum, political
interest in art education and national leverage via reform and institutional funding; it
surveys ine art and applied art to design.9 While these books provide valuable histori-
cal context, they lack critical application and often do not address non-Western edu-
cation, self-taught agents, the everyday lives of students or failed pedagogical models,
thus creating a positivistic and Eurocentric view.
A third literature exists in the form of disciplinary textbooks that outline the scope and
mandate of academic approaches to design and design history. They contain historiog-
raphy, and guidance on methodology, applications and subject areas. A second volume
from Thistlewood, Critical Studies in Art and Design Education, gathers fourteen essays
from educators working in Critical Studies. He explains this is ‘an accepted abbreviated
term for those parts of the art and design curriculum, in all levels of education, that
embrace art history, aesthetic theories, and the social, economic, political, religious and
numerous other contexts within which the practice of art and design exists, develops
and fulils its purpose’.10
Mandatory history of art and complementary studies for art and design students began
formally with Sir William Coldstream, who cemented them as a degree requirement in
his 1970 report. This ‘serious study’ was intended to:
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5
enable the student to understand relationships between his own activities and the
culture within which he lives as it has evolved. Such studies should therefore offer
him different ways of looking at art and design, and begin to build up a back-
ground against which he can view the experience of the studio. They should give
him experience of alternative ways of collecting, ordering and evaluating informa-
tion. Complementary studies should be an integral part of the student’s art and
design education, informing but not dictating to the creative aspects of his work.11
Assessed at ifteen percent of a student’s total course weighting, the introduction of

Critical Studies was not without debate, which ranged from the nature and content of
course provision and assessment to measurable outcomes.
Thistlewood’s book attempted to address these tensions, as have other texts, including
early publications seeking to deine design history and its delivery. Hazel Conway edited
Design History: A Students’ Handbook and gathered together essays from early con-
tributors to the discipline when its teaching involved targeted provision towards spe-
cialisms: dress and textiles, ceramics, furniture, interiors, industrial design and graphics.
Conway also points out early challenges for students of design history: interpretation

of the term design, the discipline with regards to other subject areas and histories,
and the breadth of design history beyond (but also including) aesthetics, periods and
styles.12 Two years later, John A Walker published Design History and the History of
Design, geared towards later undergraduate and postgraduate students. His book doc-
uments early goals and methods of design history, some of which are lesser priorities
today. Others, however, remain among its core mandates, particularly Walker’s afirma-
tion that ‘design history also fulils a critical role in respect of the discourse of design’.13
Until recently, a gap existed in this literature. Design historians, in a moment of relec-
tion and disciplinary change, are updating mediations on methods and authoring
new textbooks. Rebecca Houze and Grace Lees-Maffei’s Design History Reader is
one such example. Its table of contents reveals not only a growth in scholarship but
a sustained connection to allied ields, including texts that are also found in readers
for visual culture, art history, sociology and material culture studies. It also adheres
to important agendas in design history: a relexive tone that questions what it is as
well as what it ‘should be’; consideration of gender in the history of design; engag-
ing non-Western geographies and discourses on design; exploration of new design
cultures, practices and technologies. Kjetil Fallan’s Design History: Understanding
Theory and Method is also a valuable addition to resources and sets down a histori-
ography, renewing questions about deinitions and methods posed by Walker, and
assessing key debates and advocating interdisciplinarities—particularly towards sci-
ence and technology studies.14
The literature and exchange on art and design education is much broader than this
brief list, and has been ongoing for decades in key academic journals including Design
& Culture, Design Journal and Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education.
In 1990, Design Issues published a special issue, ‘Educating the Designer’. Editors
Leon Bellin and Marco Diani invited practicing designers and educators to confront,
refute, debate and perhaps clarify thoughts on design education, host ‘meaningful
discussion’ and ‘perhaps lead to signiicant changes’.15 Five years later, Design Issues
hosted a similar inquest speciically on the proile of history in design education.
Compiled by the journal’s regular editors, Victor Margolin, Richard Buchanan and
Dennis Doordan, ‘Telling the History of Design’ probed the status and ‘purpose in
providing an historical account of the subject, particularly for a discipline and related
professions that are primarily oriented towards present and future action’.16 While

6
this issue considers the JDH’s initiative in exploring and publishing intellectual histo-
ries of design, I will also draw on texts and discourse outside the journal for contex-
tual breadth and inclusive debate.
Pedagogy in practice: an Urmodell

Before discussing key debates arising from articles in this issue, I must clarify some
deinitions. This exercise comes with a caveat. Kjetil Fallan states in Design History:
Understanding Theory and Method that the exercise of deining contains limitations:
‘the meaning of words and concepts are inextricably linked to their use and cultural
context’.17 Quoting Wittgenstein, he posits that the indistinct deinition can be precisely
what is required. Since this is a collection of histories of design pedagogy, different dei-
nitions of design, design history and indeed interpretations of teaching and learning
are bundled together. While I agree with Walker’s distinction that design occurs ‘at
a point of intersection or mediation between different spheres’,18 these spheres are
subject to change. And they have changed—from style, utility and material to ideologi-

cal, social and economic concerns. Design processes have become more aware, more
critical and more relective. The study of its history has too. Its pedagogy should in turn.
‘Professional education is about developing pedagogies to link ideas, practices and

values under conditions of inherent uncertainty that necessitate not only judgement in
order to act, but also cognizance of the consequences of one’s action. In the presence
of uncertainty, one is obligated to learn from experience.’19 There are particular peda-
gogies associated with professional training, and design is no exception. Mike Tovey,
Professor of Industrial Design and Reader in Design Pedagogy at Coventry University,
explains that design pedagogy involves engagement in the ‘creative synthesis of ideas’
to gain entry into professional practice. It draws on a mix of elements that enable
students to become independent, self-analytical and critical thinkers and to acquire
tacit knowledge of their specialized area of work. Tovey provides an institutional deini-
tion where pedagogy is comparable to a liminal phase marked with rituals of training,
open-ended briefs for creative thinking, research, crits and assessment—so-called ‘sig-
nature pedagogies’ in design.20 Education transforms the student into the professional
in a way that differs from proliferating commercial courses or self-training design pro-
grammes. I prefer here to emphasize the qualities rather than expectations of design
pedagogy: practical, embodied, experiential. I argue that these qualities bridge the
studio and research and practice and theory gaps. In my selections for this issue, I
consider research and writing to be a creative practices that share the qualities usually
assigned to studio work. They are creative, physical and transformative processes that
are essential to the work and development of design.
In ‘Rethinking Design Education for the 21st Century’, Alain Findeli explains his own
model for pedagogy. His thinking is informed by research into histories of design peda-
gogy, particularly the Bauhaus, that inform a concept he presents as an Urmodell,
or master plan, of design curriculum. Findeli explains its elements are comprised of
equal parts art, science and technology; his method of visualizing this model consists
of a Venn diagram with three linked circles representing these elements.21 His analy-
sis of the pedagogical structures across three case studies—the Bauhaus in Weimar
and Dessau, the New Bauhaus in Chicago and the Hochschule fur Gestaltung (HfG)
in Ulm—suggests they implemented alternative versions of this balance but with the
same core elements. HfG, for example, prioritized science and technology over an artis-
tic-focused curriculum. The adapted model he presents to visualize pedagogy at HfG
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7
involves two concentric circles representing the prioritization of science and technology
and a separate, detached circle for artistry. This visualization exercise is compelling and
allows one to question what the overall model would look like when translated from
the metaphorical into a particular, given context. This is Findeli’s project.
Debates related to pedagogy, as Findeli concedes, involve disagreements over the ‘rela-
tive importance’ and ‘respective function’ of curricular elements. It is a dificult quality
to measure. Analysis requires taking the educator’s intent and pedagogical framing
into account but also the student’s retention and translated experience, resulting in
a measured outcome that may differ from the original model. The result, in Findeli’s
concept, should adapt elements from the Urmodell into a balanced ‘design purpose/
project’. This requires ethical awareness to achieve balance, in addition to a shift from
the applied to the epistemological and away from the problem/solution orientation.
Findeli advocates a process where designers see themselves alongside users as intel-
ligent, responsible stakeholders in a system: (1) The problem becomes State A of a
System; (2) The solution becomes State B of that system; (3) The designer and user
are stakeholders in the system or product and are transformed via its emergence and

implementation. State B, after time, begets another state, resulting in perpetual devel-
opment, which is more considered and stable than the popular term ‘innovation’ is
often understood to connote.
To support his model, Findeli emphasizes attention to the human aspect of a design
brief rather than its product, followed by a shift from production, aesthetics or ergo-
nomics to services and less material consumption. Design systems and projects are
embedded and involved rather than applied and consumed.22 Ostensibly, as design
states go from A to B to A2 to B2, these elements will metamorphose to accommodate
best practice in a particular design context. The manner and process of this perpetual
system also begets perpetual debate.
Areas of debate raised in this issue: a new Urmodell

Art and design pedagogy vary within and outside institutions and according to social,
geographic and cultural conditions. As such, this issue addresses histories of design
pedagogy, rather than an overarching, comprehensive history.23 Articles gathered here
were published between 1989 and 2014, with focuses ranging from applied arts in
Scotland to design history curriculum in twenty-irst century design schools. Thematic
categories structure their presentation and identify what I suggest are key elements
in pedagogical development in design and design history education. The exercise of
selecting and organizing articles for this issue was a challenge; structures and tables
of contents embody arguments, resources and scholarly investments.24 To explain my
thinking, I draw upon Findeli’s methodology and present an Urmodell of my own, not
to represent the practice of design, but to show how its education requires three con-
stituencies in lux with one another [1]: design systems and projects (work); ethics and
method (relexivity); and critical histories and theories (criticality).
The proposed model is informed by my research within and outside the JDH and dem-
onstrates how design history can inform future practice. Each article explains how
these elements have affected design education, and their authors provide valuable
contexts that help present scholars and practitioners understand these inluences. As
an Urmodell, the image shown is not a solid framework but a provocation. Models
are a means of testing and disseminating speculative analogies of how phenomena

8
operate; they bridge the abstraction between theory and real-
ity or between the formal and unknown, which coaxes forth
a representational programme for debate. Mary S. Morgan
and Margaret Morrison describe the result as ‘a mixture of ele-
ments, including those from outside the original domain of
investigation’ giving the model ‘partially independent status’.25
No model, therefore, can exist in a vacuum, and they neces-
sarily draw upon known resources to form a navigable path-
way between theories and empirical evidence. In other words,
the proportion and dynamic relationship between constituent
elements of the model will change depending on the context
of its application. In mathematics, the act of applying models
to known realities can generate positive or negative and neu-
tral analogies. Positive analogies occur if the properties of the
model directly correlate to the phenomenon, negative or neu-
tral if they do not or if the properties of the phenomenon are
not yet known, respectively.26 Models, therefore, are a mediat-

ing, rather than a stringent, construction. They can build con-
nections, further other analogies or be replaced as knowledge
grows—a working-through that requires lexibility and creativ-
ity in adaptation. The Urmodell, as a form of model provided
to foster subsequent, interpretive models, suggests constituent
Fig 1. Urmodell for Design elements and their natures but not their speciic proportions. It
Pedagogy, in the manner of is antithetical to my deinition of pedagogy to enforce a global, overarching formula
Alain Findeli, ‘Rethinking Design
here. But I do suggest invaluable, core ingredients.
Education for the 21st Century:
Theoretical, Methodological, and
‘Design Systems and Projects’, the irst thematic section in this issue, gathers four arti-
Ethical Discussion’, Design Issues
17, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 8. cles that span 100 years of design education in the UK and Europe, with a speciic
view to production and manufacturing practices in design work. Taking a chronologi-
cal approach in this section delineates the importance of context when researching
histories of design pedagogy. Each paper considers the changing meaning of design,
relationships between industry and training institutes, and the evolving conception
of professionalism in design practice. The section asks: What is the optimal balance
between the college, workplace and studio; what inluences this relationship in dif-
ferent contexts? National interests in design, commodity production, public education
and taste, the status of the designer, and legislation are also raised in this selection.
The second thematic section, ‘Ethics and Methods’, brings the discussion inside the design
institution and takes a socio-historical view of emerging pedagogical structures and expe-
riences. Ethics are assessed here; so too are the expanding roles of research into new
methods, materials and applications of design practice (emerging technologies and new
collaborations with science). Expanding degree study at new and advanced levels, includ-
ing PhDs in design, is creating a broader base for design in higher education. This section
asks how design pedagogy can reach wider audiences, facilitate global collaboration and
maintain a critical position where development is paired with relection and debate.
The third and inal section, ‘Critical Histories and Theories’, relates to design history and
design studies from their growth in the 1970s to the present. This is often how histories
and theories of design and their afiliated contextual studies are framed in higher edu-
cation—in fractional proportion to design practice. My intention here is to place this
element as an invaluable requirement in future design practice, not just for the beneits
for students but also for the relexive and analytical exercises it affords educators. Each
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9
essay in this third section discusses turns and articulations that seek to situate histories
of design within studio practice and also speaks to the value design historians and their
research methods have to enhancing design.
Design systems and projects: training, industry, art and design

Articles in this issue situate design within particular historical contexts that affect our
understanding of the term ‘design’. How design was taught in these geographies and
cultures aids our understanding of the value, process and agents involved in the con-
ception of design, its production and its outcome. Artemis Yagou states, ‘When the
word “design” is used to express a sole designer’s creative activity leading to an ulti-
mate solution, it is in fact holding back the entire cooperative and past-related dimen-
sions of designing.’27 A relective approach to design allows us to consider not only the
role of the designer in relation to an outcome but also contextual variations of how
design is perceived as a product, process and mediated system of political, cultural and
historical production and consumption.28

Some design historians suggest industrialization is the genesis of the history of design.29
This issue begins here not because it is in harmony with that deinition, but because
the articles portray speciic pressures that I think are remerging in present discourses
surrounding design pedagogy: training, social backgrounds of students, relationships
to public taste and national interest in design. Stana Nenadic’s article, ‘Designers in
the Nineteenth-Century Scottish Fancy Textile Industry: Education, Employment and
Exhibition’, focuses on design education and reform, which developed to support a
local textile industry. Her research describes the establishment of regional training
courses to increase the quality, originality and volume of pattern design that allowed
Scottish textile products to compete against continental imports and stronger English
markets. Nenadic’s work is noted for its design historical methodology, making inform-
ative interpretations of the social status (low), gender (mainly male) and training (mod-
est and reliant upon copying) of Scottish designers at the time, which she deduces
via archival traces in pattern books, wage books, newspaper employment advertise-
ments, post ofice directories, writings of designer–reformers and notices for exhibi-
tions and competitions to foster public interest in design. Her research describes an
era of manufacturing and political change, and the efforts of designers, rather than
politicians, to direct reform. Analysis of the emerging educational system in Glasgow
and Dunfermline is key for Nenadic’s argument, which builds a landscape of the ‘com-
plex provincial engagement with the processes of textile design at the height of the
industry’s commercial success’, as compared to British design training generally at this
time.30 The localized system Nenadic describes resulted in networked movement, pub-
lic engagement and proliferation of design roles, employment and specialisms in the
Scottish trade. It showcases focused professional training and the accompanying hope
for elevated artistic credentials and increased international market competition.31
Taking a similar focus on this period, Daniela Prina’s article, ‘Design in Belgium before
Art Nouveau: Art, Industry and the Reform of Artistic Education in the Second Half of
the Nineteenth Century’, considers reformers’ aims of instructing craftsmen, artisans,
manufacturers and the public across social classes in the importance and nature of
‘good taste’. Drawing was a key locus of debate in the process of improving design and
design education. It was a means of raising the quality not only of ornamentation and
products, but also of nationally-manufactured goods; that allowed competition at inter-
national levels and the consolidation of an identiiable Belgian niche in these markets.32
Prina explains how igureheads from across the arts, architecture and policy advocated

10
the foundation of schools in regional centres and supported drawing as key instruction.
They advocated abandoning ‘slavish copying of engravings’ in favour of new models
inspired by botanical study and rational and geometric principles that approach draw-
ing as a language for communication that embraced abstraction over representation.33
Reformists believed teaching craftsmen to use their imaginations would increase the
aesthetic quality and appeal of Belgian products, and alternative models of education
were inluential in a shift from production to aesthetic reinement.34
There is a persistent debate about skills developed during design education and how
they prepare students for work in their ield, one that Nenadic and Prina describe in rela-
tion to histories of nationalism and industry. Alain Findeli, on the other hand, uses the
tension between educational institution and industry—namely, the dificulty of pairing
pedagogical priorities of intellectual development with industrial demands toward pro-
duction—to address the possibility and inevitability of ‘teaching as industry’. His paper
‘Design Education and Industry: the Laborious Beginnings of the Institute of Design
in Chicago in 1944’ begins with the suggestion: ‘If there is an area which is currently
undergoing change under the pressure of industrialism, it is certainly that of university

teaching’.35 László Moholy-Nagy’s involvement with the industrialist Walter Paepcke
and the re-orientation of the Chicago School of Design into the Institute of Design
provides Findeli’s statement with context and application. This short history includes
rich material that narrates the transition from a communal studio without a structured
curriculum to a wartime support for the Secretary of Defense.36 The Institute ran on an
administrative structure that was separate from teaching, and planning and develop-
ment was presided over by a Board of Directors drawn from industrial backgrounds
and headed by Paepcke. For Findeli, ‘The Maholy Affair’ is a situation all too familiar
for industrial design schools, not least in its assured separation of business-centred
administration from pedagogical directorates, but also in the denial of relationships
essential to the intellectual principles and priorities that deined the Chicago School of
Design, and indeed its model, the Bauhaus. Re-orienting the Institute’s relationship to
the needs of industry resulted in pressure points, from limited teaching staff to deined
course outcomes over pedagogical discussion and distinct departments based on prod-
uct outcomes, which compromised the school’s original structure and goals.
What is the design school for? The Urmodell I put forward suggests design pedagogy
is responsible for three elements. One is the acquisition of professional design skills
through design work. It is important to understand historical attempts to structure
design education in order to understand its failures and legacies. How we measure the
profession and act of design post-education is also important in this project. So too
are the discussions we have with students about what they are doing, why, and what
they need. Susan Bittker’s ‘Report on a Survey of Recent Crafts and Design Graduates
of Scottish Art Colleges’, is a compelling contribution to this perspective. Unlike the
National Student Survey and statistical equivalents today, Bittker proiles the designer
rather than institutional performance, by gathering statistical and qualitative data on
Scottish art, craft and design graduates from four colleges, Duncan of Jordanstone
College of Art, Edinburgh College of Art, Gray’s School of Art and Glasgow School
of Art, between 1984 and 1986. As a recent graduate of Edinburgh College of Art,
Bittker was concerned that fellow makers were under-equipped to enter the market-
place and workforce, which is a common anxiety for present day students who strive
to be ‘industry ready’. She mailed comprehensive surveys with an explanatory cover-
ing letter to 475 graduates and received 158 completed surveys in return, with many
respondents attaching supplementary material including business cards, promotional
materials and extensive letters. A comprehensive summary of the questionnaire can
Maya Oppenheimer
11
be found in Bittker’s report, but the section on College Training is particularly rele-
vant to this issue. It communicates a weak review on several points: business studies
were criticized for being too narrow or ‘not suficiently tied to the real world’; market
preparation was lacking; and there was little encouragement to collaborate with other
departments (a staple explained by Findeli in the Institute of Design before its depart-
mental re-organization). As a result, ‘only 16 per cent of respondents felt their college
had prepared them “well or very well” for their chosen career’, followed by fourteen
percent adequately and seventy percent ‘not very well or not at all’. Eighty-four percent
suggest changes to improve the curriculum.37
Utopia, a term from Findeli’s essay, summarizes this section.38 Attempts to balance
the interests of design education, student feedback and industry requirements are in
constant pursuit of a harmonious, seemingly impossible equilibrium. For Nenadic, the
establishment of schools to directly support and improve industry was challenged by
manufacturers’ preference to copy foreign designs and ignore locally-trained pattern
designers; Prina’s battle between academies and drawing schools over the shaping of
national identity via aesthetics of taste and industrial products was thwarted by tradi-

tional academies; Findeli’s emerging hierarchy of industrialist administration enveloped
an educational project; and Bittker’s inquiry into the life of graduates revealed inad-
equacies in professional training. Findeli offers some compelling theories as to why this
discord manifests itself: industrial alignment of design pedagogy requires different and
occasionally irreconcilable time spans and priorities. Pedagogical initiatives germinate
much more slowly. It is also a matter of ‘blue-sky’ thinking, the pedagogy of ambigu-
ity, which students experience in college but ind absent from the workplace. Findeli
concludes that balance should and must be sought if the ethics and methods shared by
design education and industry are to be valued as mutually interactive and supportive.
Ethics and methods: Emerging structures of design education

Whereas the previous section considered the design project or system in relation
to industry (commodity, production and professionalization), this second element
addresses the ethics and methods of designing speciically within the design school.
Preparing students for the workplace should also mean teaching students how to be
responsible designers: to be citizens that participate in the systems they introduce and
that use the products they create. This section considers three case studies with differ-
ing pedagogical priorities that also relate to current factors facing students and college
staff today: changing tools, student access, cultural geographies of practice, resource
and budget constraints, and curriculum and assessment standards. Each article exam-
ines a different pedagogical project that attempts to nurture the practice of design
rather than frame education for market proit. They do so by considering the respon-
sibility of the college to teach students to be ethical, inclusive and socially engaged
designers.
In ‘First Steps: Early Design Education and Professionalization in Greece’, Artemis Yagou
describes the absence of a recognizable design profession in inter-war Greece—a
period of socio-political instability and powerful cultural exchange that commenced
with signiicant refugee immigration.39 Population growth increased market demand
and labour forces and brought new knowledge, including professional skills in weav-
ing, ceramics, woodcarving, metalwork and decorative work. For Yagou, investigating
education in this context means considering the structures of established professional
specialization in emerging design practice, which includes the consolidation of art and

12
engineering education as professional ideologies. This, in turn, inluenced the dificult
emergence of a professional design ield. Education, explains Yagou, was ‘ideologically
dominated by archaeolatry’ and was ‘suspicious towards pragmatism and despised the
practical’: technical and vocational education was conined to a handful of commercial
and naval schools.40 Need increased after 1922, and applied arts schools emerged to
provide training and choreograph professional ranks of craftsmen for handicrafts as
well as industry.41 Preliminary models looked to continental Europe with a particular
interest in paid-workshop hybrids. By the mid-1930s, Yagou explains, three categories
of institution provided design education: applied arts schools active in instructing toy
construction, decorative arts and draughtsmanship; technical night schools and provin-
cial schools for mechanics, woodcarving and ‘arts and professions’; and orphanages
providing elementary technical education.
Uncertain theorization around design pedagogy and its communication to students,

coupled with a struggle to improve the curriculum’s social prestige, ranked design train-
ing behind the more distinguished and respected arts and engineering schools. This
bias persisted despite avocation of technical training as the best, most relevant means

of general education at a time of industrialization and modernization. The design pro-
fessionalization project in Greece is a conlation of cultural factors and perceptions
that are different from those encountered in post-industrialized global markets today.
Design as a profession, however, is still hotly debated, particularly with new technology
changing practice methods and vocabularies of specialization and training.
Anna Rowland’s article, ‘Business Management in the Weimar Bauhaus’, challenges

Findeli’s earlier argument on equalizing industry and pedagogy in design schools.
Rowland describes Weimar’s Bauhaus, with productive workshops and externalized
communication supported by Walter Gropius, who realized that the school relied inan-
cially upon ‘inding industrial manufacturers for the models developed in the work-
shops’; this relieved dependence on government funding and policy.42 Careful not to
imply success but rather to explain the attempt, Rowland describes the establishment
of a production department within the college led by a business manager (Syndikus),
who streamlined the previously ad hoc commission process by communicating with
sales representatives and by attending trade fairs. Running an educational institution
with a view to proiteering, as Findeli shows in his discussion of the Institute of Design
in Chicago, produces a problematic model. Rowland’s analyses of Bauhaus GmbH, a
public company with an aim of supporting ‘the education of creatively gifted people to
become artistic and technical productive workers in the ield of construction in a pro-
ductively active workshop’ also ended up clashing with Gropius’ pedagogical ideas.43
Heiner Jacob had direct experience of a pedagogical experiment derived from the
Bauhaus’ precedent. In his article ‘HfG Ulm: A Personal View of an Experiment in
Democracy and Design Education’, he explains how a project to re-educate young
Germans towards ‘a spiritual regeneration’ begat plans for an adult education cen-
tre and eventually the school for environmental design in Ulm.44 The school had four
departments: Industrial Design, Information (later Film-making), Visual Communication
and Industrialized Building, which welcomed about 150 students a year with a staff-
student ratio of 1:16. Funding was an issue due to the political afiliations of founders
and wavering support from the State, which began to make stipulations on the HfG’s
operations, including an attempt, subsequently, to absorb it into a State University.
Jacob’s irst-hand account of his studentship describes the diverse and active school
community, its academic development and the custom facility that was designed by
Max Bill with staff and student contributions on construction and furniture design and
Maya Oppenheimer
13
production. Joint meals were timed to ensure communication between departments
and debates on design and philosophy: ‘design [was] viewed as the ethics underly-
ing social developments’.45 The curriculum was reviewed and adjusted annually via an
Educational Conference, resulting in luid and argument-illed discussions that affected
the school’s operations and reputation. Studios were small (no more than ifteen pupils)
and visiting lecturers numbered four to every full-time staff member, providing stability,
variety and counterpoint. ‘Most importantly,’ Jacob concludes, through a close relation-
ship with tutors, students ‘acquired a methodology, a structured approach to work—
something which was totally non-existent in many other colleges.’46 Jacob insists that
even with several pioneering practices in design methods and materials, the key legacy
of the HfG is sequential: its role-model alumni who now hold key positions in industry.
For a more effective and ethically relexive pedagogical framework to function, industry
and cultural partners, as well as government and policy makers, must understand and
support the design school’s role of educating not only its enrolled students but also the
broader sector. Education, furthermore, goes beyond the technical, the ‘paste-up’ fore-
shadowed by Vignelli, and develops critical decision-making skills that improve rather
than reiterate practice.

Colin Mulberg’s report, ‘[Education] “Just Don’t Ask Me to Deine It”: Perceptions of
Technology in the National Curriculum’, provides a valuable perspective on the opin-
ions of stakeholders regarding the impact of technology on design education in British
schools.47 After building a foundational history of the tense position of the ‘technical’
in education, Mulberg points out that ‘technology’ as a term and locus of study is
poorly deined compared to other disciplines; a familiar point after Yagou’s analysis of
vocational training in Greece. In a Technology Working Group interim report, Mulberg
explains:
We recognize that each of the terms ‘design’ and ‘technology’ can convey differ-
ent meanings to different people [. . .] we acknowledge that some differences in
perceptions of both ‘design’ and ‘technology’ exist and [. . .] our image should
[. . .] be easily understood, and where necessary readily translated into their own
terms by teachers whatever their subject.48
Technology emerges as a malleable term beyond the hardware entering schools; it

is also connected to social and subjective interpretation all of which must be under-
stood to fully beneit from its operational and cultural functionality.49 Mulberg makes
an important distinction here. As commercial courses and certiicates—from General
Assembly to YouTube tutorials—provide digital platforms for DIY design strategies,
understanding a critical, creative process preserves the relevance and functionality
of the design school curriculum. Mulberg explains of this report, ‘Educationalists all
viewed technology as more than a physical skill to be taught in the classroom. On many
issues they expressed similar views to those found in Social Studies of Technology, and
studies of design history [. . .] Technology was seen as not just involving the technical,
but was interwoven with the social, cultural and political.’50
The inal piece in this section, Jane Pavitt’s Archives & Collections Report on the
Camberwell Collection of Applied Arts, extends the discussion on education tools by
giving an account of the formation and implementation of object collections in early
and higher education schools. Facilitating learning via primary resources encourages
students to be analytical, to see their everyday environment as illed with designed
objects and agents, and to pursue the histories behind said objects, agents and design-
ers. Some courses, such as the Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum History

14
of Design MA and the Parsons/Cooper-Hewitt History of Design and Curatorial Studies
MA were founded upon proximity to an object collection. Design schools have also
cultivated their own collections, drawn from past classroom resources, alumni projects
and considered acquisitions. Pavitt explains that Camberwell’s collection originated as
a circulation collection for London schools, and consists of over 2,000 objects collected
between 1951 and the mid-1970s, including wood, metal, ceramics, glass, textiles,
plastic and paper objects. It aimed at educating and interesting young students, a sort
of early intervention ensuring:
[. . .] a right direction to the taste of boys and girls while they are still at school [. .
.] making the understanding [that] the design of the things around us is part of our
daily life, and our judgments and our appreciation depends much on our happi-
ness in life. Design is not just something for those who can draw, anyone can get
pleasure from the shape of a wooden desk or the satisfying curve of a handle.51
Camberwell College of Arts still maintains the ‘public and educational purpose’ of the
largely intact collections, through research, cataloguing and exhibitions. This preserves

an insight into how design was framed to young students as emotionally affective and
moralizing.52
Yagou begins her article with a powerful remark: ‘Education relects a society’s choices
about how it wants to shape its future. Learning about education’s history is funda-
mental to understanding the present and guiding future choices’.53 Articles in this
issue have so far addressed Western contexts over the past two centuries, but explor-
ing the development of global design pedagogy would push this discussion further.
Singanapalli Balaram, for example, argues that contemporary Indian design pedagogy
is informed by a cultural understanding of design with a speciic and complex cul-
tural history.54 Traditional views that design is manifest in everyday life, an emphasis
on tacit and generational teaching, and recognition of nineteenth-century colonial art
school inluences have all affected present educational philosophies. While retaining a
Western model of higher education post-independence, schools such as the National
Institute of Design in Ahmedabad teach students design principles drawn from this
history: utility, self-expression and concern for the physical environment and relevance
to human need. Professionalism is measured in work and conduct, and responsibility
lies with society before one’s self-interest or proit. Balaram’s article emphasizes design
education as a nexus of speciic factors that support communities whilst extending to
international networks. What emerges from possible interactions across global educa-
tors is not just the realization that we share many concerns, but appreciation of the rich
multiplicity of ideas and pedagogical approaches and experiments.55
As design engages with complicated issues, including technological disruptions, biol-

ogy and sustainable design, it is important for educators to steward opportunities for
design students to ind agency and build personal ethical frameworks into their methods
and work. Research and writing, which is often thought the work of a separate, aca-
demic curriculum, is part of this process. John Calvelli, for example, sees design history
as a mechanism to teach complex topics such as ethics and sustainability. He argues,
‘This pedagogy raises questions regarding the issues of design history, the relationship
between historical study and practice, the understanding of contemporary and historical
frameworks and the engagement of an historical and ecological imagination.’56
Annabella Pollen’s writing in Design & Culture directly addresses the critical perspec-
tive, subjectivity and engaged learning that occurs in historical and contextual studies.
Maya Oppenheimer
15
Based on student feedback at the University of Brighton, Pollen concludes, ‘design
students can experience historical and cultural studies as a fertile space for establish-
ing their own subject positions as producers, consumers and interpreters of designed
objects in a material world’.57 Many colleges, including those within the University of
the Arts London, are looking to expand writing in the design curriculum through stu-
dent blogging and greater lexibility across contextual studies remits to resemble studio
briefs.58 Teaching & Learning events hosted by the DHS have addressed research prac-
tice communication, including writing and podcasting workshops; the 2009 Annual
DHS Conference, ‘Writing Design: Object, Process, Discourse’, looked at disciplinary
contributions that could inform pedagogy in this area.
As the level of degree study in design increases, with several colleges now offering PhDs
by practice and doctoral qualiications in design, the role of research and writing as design
methods will continue to increase.59 During the incubation years at design school, how-
ever, the role of government, industry, and external forces will affect pedagogical mod-
els. Where possible, this low should balance ethics and methods in both process and
outcome stages, with the designer acting as an invested agent as well as the user of

their implementation. As such, design education is not only a matter of acquiring tacit
or procedural knowledge, although this is important; it should also expect students to
become contributors to society, to become active, communicative citizens.
Critical histories and theories: Turns and articulations in

design history and design studies
Design history is a relatively young discipline, and its place in education is bound up
with the same challenges that face its object of study: the history of design.60 Several
academics have published on this subject in the UK and abroad; it is not worth repeat-
ing these histories here.61 Instead, I wish to underscore the relationship of design history
and related disciplines to studio teaching in design schools, and design history’s own
growth as a disciplinary pursuit that has had several iterations, inluences and goals.
Histories are never ixed, nor can design be. Attitudes, contexts and perspectives
change. Design history, while interdisciplinary in its present practice, has clear roots
in art history, roots that some design historians felt were restrictive. In the October
1978 issue of the Bulletin of the Association of Art Historians, John A. Walker accused
the annual conference sessions of being unrelective, without consideration of meth-
ods, and devoid of theories of practice or pedagogy. The art historical discipline was
‘static’.62 In 1976, Bridget Wilkins wrote about polytechnics’ demand for design his-
tory over universities; it was in this pedagogical environment that design historians
could ‘develop a method to integrate other disciplines and pass this on to students,
to integrate into their work’.63 It was the Association of Art Historians (AAH) that
incubated early meetings of the Design History Research Group, a sub-committee
of its members that assembled to discuss design history, ‘an academic area of great
importance in institutions where students of design often outnumber ine art stu-
dents’.64 Interests of this group included stimulating the growth of design history as
a discipline, identifying these challenges, and coming out from beneath the wing of
art history. Past Bulletins of the AAH published heated debates regarding the merits
and challenges of this emergence. While the discipline was then ill-deined, with-
out an organ for publication, lacking a recognized training or research centre, and
yet to establish undergraduate degree programmes, there were clear reasons to gain
stronger intellectual ground.65

16
Texts on design history methods as well as on the history of design studies have since
expanded and strengthened the discipline, which has become increasingly self-aware.
Johanna Drucker writes, ‘Design historians have the opportunity to pass on apprecia-
tion of the work of earlier generations into a broader recognition as accomplishments
that shape the material world’. There is an aspect of cultural legacy as well as scholarly
investment at hand. Drucker explains the need for an epistemological shift in design
history methodology from knowledge to knowing, from positivist to probabilistic, from
empirical to interpretive. The ‘distinction reorients our understanding, humbling us
with a wake-up call to the ways our own thought processes, values and beliefs produce
us as subjects of history and culture’.66 Similar calls are found in recent publications
from Houze and Lees-Maffei (2010), Fallan (2010), Huppatz and Lees-Maffei (2013),
Sparke (2013) and Fry, Dilnot and Stewart (2015).67
Sparke’s third edition of Introduction to Design and Culture observes the shift in design
history from theoretical and material work on class, taste and consumption in the
1980s to the creation and relection of meaning in everyday life and a recent focus
on global, technological, social and cultural shifts. Jonathan Woodham mentions

design history’s afiliation with social anthropology, material culture, gender studies,
social and cultural history, cultural geography, histories of business, economics, politics
and industry. Fallan adds methods from science and technology studies to this list.68
D. J. Huppatz and Grace Lees-Maffei put forward their own deinition for design his-
tory as the ‘study of designed artefacts, practices and behaviour, and the discourses
surrounding these, in order to understand the past, contextualise the present, and map
possible trajectories for the future’. In addition to this ontological trajectory, there is a
‘distinctive engagement with the artefacts that shape our artiicial worlds’, and this is
what characterizes design history and ‘also its contribution to the humanities in gen-
eral’—as well as future design.69
As the list of interests, methods and disciplinary afiliations grows, some scholars are
calling for clearer nomenclature to make sense of these quicksilver interdisciplinary
vanguards. Victor Margolin and Stuart Kendall, for example, prefer Design Studies, to
expand the ield and reconcile academia with the public.70 Growth of a design history
preoccupied with context and ideas over forms and styles also means a different peda-
gogical structure and approach. As discussed in the previous theme, this pedagogical
framework is a way to engage design students. But what does it look like? How do
design historians construct and think about their curriculum? What can design histori-
ans do to help form pedagogical programs and future educational models and policy?
In 2009, Hazel Clark and David Brody edited a special issue of JDH to collect revised
papers from a 2008 Design Studies Forum meeting at the College Art Association in
Dallas, Texas. Their introduction, ‘The Current State of Design History’, was named
after that panel and also pays homage to Clive Dilnot’s ‘The State of Design History’,
published decades earlier in Design Issues.71 Clark and Brody assess design history at
the vanguard of interconnectivity, not only across colleagues and geographic borders,
but also particularly in an interdisciplinary sense: ‘Networks of scholars working col-
laboratively, as well as independently as individuals, are drawing on diverse methodolo-
gies as design history engages with and builds upon the approaches of other scholarly
ields’. Essays from Lisa Banu, Teal Triggs, Sarah Lichtman and Grace Lees-Maffei con-
sider what it means ‘to use the framework of history to explicate design; discuss meth-
odologies; demonstrate interdisciplinary scholarships; consider the margins, without
marginalization; and to help us not only to address the current state of design history
but also to move it forward’.72
Maya Oppenheimer
17
A recurring argument in the articles in this issue is the need for design history to turn
its attention to histories of design pedagogy. As the discipline develops its methodo-
logical palette, including anthropological methods such as oral history and visual eth-
nography—there is potential to expand experiences, processes and socio-historical
contexts that inluence designers and educators.73 Victoria Newhouse’s collaboration
with Margot Wittkower is a case in point.74 Wittkower trained at the new Bauhaus
at Weimar along with international students, including few women. Five years after
graduating, she began practising as an interior designer, in Berlin from 1928 to 1933,
and then in London until 1939. Newhouse’s article relects its publication date in
method, proiling the igure of the designer to ascertain her socio-historical context,
but it is part of an important area of design history that provides perspectives of
practising designers who were also women.75 Sue Clegg and Wendy Mayield’s asser-
tion inds traction here: ‘as educators, we can, do, and should challenge dominant
disciplinary discourses which naturalise the gendering of technologies’.76 Failure to
do so leads to distortion and exclusion. Newhouse makes ample use of Wittkower’s
perspective to inform the article, including recollections, translated letters and col-
laborative input on draft work. Details on the atmosphere of the workshop, day

schedules, social structure, briefs, crits and visits to museums give rare insights into
pedagogy from the student’s point of view. Newhouse expands upon Wittkower’s
notes by giving background information on the history of design schools in Germany
and what would have been available for Wittkower to consider as a Jewish woman
in Berlin wishing to pursue interior design. Wittkower’s insight as an educator is also
rare; however, there is little of this experience or of her personal pedagogical views
given in the article.
Design history should be a relexive practice, which does scholarship credit; those
engaged in its work develop new approaches and articulations to advance investi-
gations into design and design practice. In ‘Architectural and Spatial Design Studies:
Inscribing Architecture in Design Studies’, Jilly Traganou suggests an inclusive discipli-
nary metamorphosis. This involves ‘reorganization of the ield of spatio-architectural
studies and the creation of a new scholarly public realm that bridges between existing
disciplines and ields, rather than delineating a new disciplinary space’.77 Extensions
of the spatial range from interior space to geographic regions and critical analysis of
representations and narratives, as well as policies, are part of this epistemological shift.
The possibilities are inclusive and inquisitive, and Traganou carefully explains the ethos
of the reorganization she endorses as bridge-like spanning interstitial gaps, rather than
a restructuring. She advocates for architecture’s ‘relationship with broader socio-cul-
tural and political contexts’ with open versions, narratives and authorships instead of
lineages, heroicisms and the study of Architecture as a static, built history. Furthermore,
the co-ordination of architecture and spatial design studies would place new methodo-
logical and pedagogical tools at the disposal of practitioners and students alike, which
promises to dispel miscommunication and foster new ideas, colloquia and collabora-
tion. Studying non-canonical or non-paradigmatic architectural themes will yield critical
perspectives that further the ethics and remits of practice and policies that affect the
lives of those connected, as we all are, to spatial environments, thus framing the archi-
tect as citizen, intellectual and design professional.78
The inal article in this issue sums up its main themes. Strategies and philosophies
applied to teaching and learning in design and its history rest ‘on differing episte-
mological, pedagogical and historiographical assumptions’. Sarah Lichtman points
out, via the introductory design history survey class at Parsons, ‘History of Design,
1850–2000’, that there is little consensus on the deinition of design, the content of

18
its survey or, as themes in this issue demonstrate, relationships with industry or the
optimum balance of ethics and method and experimentation in practice. To teach the
survey class requires educators to consider their assumptions and ask what the aim is
of their course: is it to make better historians or better designers? Perhaps the answer
is neither. We do not need to and cannot forecast the students’ eventual intellec-
tual application of this material: ‘Only by articulating our own expectations—and
by emphasizing students’ own agency in relation to course material—can history of
design surveys remain meaningful and useful.’79 Similar to Pollen’s conclusions, she
argues that contextual studies in design history and critical theories inspire students
to think and form their own connections and pursue intellectual growth—a compo-
nent of design pedagogy laid down by Tovey as discussed earlier in this introduction.
Lecturers should endeavour to encourage these agencies and relationships to course
material. Strategies here include asking students what histories or narratives are miss-
ing from dominant discourses, revealing institutional frameworks and power, con-
textualizing current practice and helping students situate themselves in pedagogical
narratives. This is a theoretical way of intertwining the theory–practice gap—know-
ing-in-action won by the intrinsic motivation of exploring design. Lichtman confronts

the question of what history can teach designers (who, according to Jacob, should
continue to inluence education after their graduation) and what the responsibility of
design historians is in this work: ‘formulating a history of design survey for designers
entails important questions of content, goals, structure and pedagogy. It presents an
opportunity for design historians to reconsider diverse methodologies and a multi-
plicity of ways within which to frame the ield.’80
Future applications of histories of design pedagogy

This issue raises critical questions about histories of design education, in order to pro-
voke current educators and designers to make links across social and historical contexts
to inform present practices. To do so, I suggest that the themes structuring these twelve
articles can also provide core elements in an Urmodell of future design pedagogy [1].
Historical inluences on design are still relevant: national identities, power politics,
political investment, industry involvement, class, methods of production, standards of
professionalization and education reform continue to affect today’s designers, but in
different ways. This is partly because how we understand, explain and engage with
design is always changing. So too are our ethics and methods of making, research-
ing and formulating subjective and professional relationships to design and design-
ing. Recalling the theoretical function of a model, I would like to end this article by
re-emphasizing that the elements presented in the Urmodell are suggestions for con-
stituent inclusion and not proportional prescriptions. Depending on the pedagogical
context, there will be positive, negative and neutral analogies that link these themes to
the educational reality of the student and educator.
While it is my hope that readers, with their own design backgrounds and subjec-
tivities, will ind many interpretations via this Urmodell, there are a number worth
elucidating here to demonstrate possible encounters with this arrangement of work.
For example, design education, historically, lies at the core of several ambitious ini-
tiatives meant to bolster national industries by improving the quality of product and
design output. What narratives exist outside a dominant historical perspective of
industry, and who else was involved in production outside these frameworks? Both
Nenadic and Bittker are assigned to the irst theme in this issue, but they offer com-
pelling and contrasting approaches to similar questions surrounding the importance,
Maya Oppenheimer
19
inluence or interference of industry in design education and regional histories and
voices. How do we document and communicate these voices? Another question
arises between Sarah Lichtman’s essay and Jilly Traganou’s argumentation: how do
we effectively facilitate and communicate the importance of critical research and
socio-historical context in design practice? What role can design history research
continue to play in the articulation of such diverse approaches to design pedagogy,
and will this direct a more ethical practice of consumption sprung from informed
awareness?
Shifts in pedagogy are inevitable. Indeed, they should change and present divergences.
The Urmodell accommodates and requires this adaptation and variation. John Steers
claims, ‘we need to cherish multiple visions of teaching and learning about, for and
through’ art and design, and thus to perceive, accept and respect a diversity of cultures
and their knowledge, ideas and acts. We must avoid ‘insidious international pedagogy
and recognize that alternative approaches to curriculum and assessment are increas-
ingly being erased by the dominant ideologies of some governments and inluential,
wealthy organizations’.81 This chimes with Vignelli’s educational sabre rattling and his

emphasis on culture. There is value in sound pedagogical training that fosters ethical
and socially responsible practice, considers production in some balance with intellec-
tual interrogation and strategizes structures of curriculum that observe but do not
acquiesce to the quicksilver demands of industry. Meanwhile, it should harbour the
relexive ability to assess and change and improve.
I began this essay with the words of a favoured graphic designer, and I will end it
with another. Before doing so, I should clarify that I do not enjoy TED Talks. I discuss
their peculiar niche with my design students and suggest they are best incorporated
into research with a critical, even cynical lens. Paula Scher’s 2008 talk, I confess,
is an exception. In twenty-two minutes, she discusses her career, various projects
(informed by design history) and a mantra she lives and works by. It is an invaluable
pedagogical guide: design, Scher suggests, should be ‘serious, not solemn’. ‘Being
solemn is easy. Being serious is hard.’82 Her examples explain that seriousness is
complex, creative, experiential, spontaneous, accidental, imperfect and rare. ‘It’s
achieved through all those kind of crazy parts of human behavior that don’t really
make any sense.’ In the application of design, this alchemy must involve history and
asking critical questions; it must involve considerations as to why and who and how;
it must involve an idea that seriously engages its author and its audience. This is the
goal of design pedagogy.
Maya Oppenheimer
London, UK
E-mail: oppenheimer.maya@gmail.com
Maya Oppenheimer is a design writer, educator and researcher based in London and
holds a PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium. Her
work currently explores object-centred transactions across art, science and design,
particularly those involving dramaturgical laboratory instruments and deception.
Her teaching relects this interest: she is a Visiting Tutor in the Critical & Historical
Studies Department at the Royal College of Art and has taught critical theory and
cultural studies at London College of Communication, Imperial College London and
the CASS School of Design. Maya is also an Executive Trustee of the Design History
Society and has published work on experiment design, theory–practice in design
pedagogy and methodologies of re-enactment in multidisciplinary forums.

20
If you have any comments to make in relation to this article, please go to the journal website on
http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org and access this article. There is a facility on the site for sending e-mail
responses to the editorial board and other readers.
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank my teaching and Design History Society colleagues with
whom I have had several enduring conversations about pedagogy and the state of design education
today. Thank you also to the four anonymous reviewers and their valuable feedback that helped
shape this issue, and to Grace Lees-Maffei as managing editor during the process. I especially hold
much appreciation and gratitude for Dipti Bhagat for her support and conidence in me undertaking
this project and for her continued passion for teaching and learning.
Notes Education in Art and Design, 1992), 8; Mervyn Romans,

ed., Histories of Art and Design Education: Collected
1 Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, ‘A Reexamination of Some Essays, Bristol: Intellect Books, 2005; Stuart Macdonald,

of the Design Arts from the Perspective of a Woman The History and Philosophy of Art Education, Cambridge:
Designer’, Arts in Society: Women and the Arts (Spring– Lutterworth Press, 2004 [1970].
Summer 1974): 115. This text is developed from a lecture
delivered at Hunter College in 1972. 10 David Thistlewood, ‘Introduction’, in Critical Studies in Art
and Design Education, ed. David Thistlewood (Burnt Mill,
2 Quoted in Victor Margolin, ‘A Decade of Design History in Harlow, Essex: Longman Group & NSEAD, 1989), 1.
the United States 1977–1987’, Journal of Design History 1,
no. 1 (1988): 55. Original italics. Vignelli made this com- 11 Department of Education and Science, National Advisory
ment in a keynote address at the ‘Coming of Age’ sympo- Council on Art Education, The Structure of Art and Design
sium, Rochester Institute of Technology, 1983. Education in the Further Education Sector. Report of a
Joint Committee of the National Advisory Council on Art
3 De Bretteville, op. cit., 115. The Woman’s Building was
Education and the National Council for Diplomas in Art and
committed to women’s education and feminist art and ran
Design, (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Ofice, 1970), 11.
studio classes, talks and seminars.
12 Hazel Conway, ‘Design History Basics’ in Design History
4 Lucy Kimbell. ‘Rethinking Design Thinking: Part I’, Design &
A Students’ Handbook, ed. Hazel Conway (London: Unwin
Culture 3, no. 3 (2011): 285.
Hyman, 1987), 4.
5 Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World (London:
13 John A. Walker, Design History and the History of Design
Thames & Hudson, 1985), 102.
(London: Pluto Press, 1989), 20.
6 Michael Beirut, ‘Ten Footnotes to a Manifesto’, in 79 Short
14 Grace Lees-Maffei, ‘General Introduction’, in The Design
Essays on Design, ed. Michael Beirut (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2007), 52. Beirut publishes the updated History Reader, eds Rebecca Houze and Grace Lees-Maffei
manifesto with footnotes that explain the history and back- (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), 1; Kjetil Fallan, Design
ground of its contents. Garland’s original can be found in History: Understanding Theory and Method, London: Berg,
Michael Beirut et al., Looking Closer 3: Classic Writings on 2010.
Graphic Design, New York: Allworth Press, 1999. 15 Leon Bellin and Marco Diani, ‘Introduction: Educating
7 Department of Culture, Media & Sport, ‘Creative Industries the Designer, Beginning a Dialog’, Design Issues 7, no. 1
Economic Estimates January 2015—Key Findings’. Accessed (Autumn 1990): 3.
30 January 2016. https://www.gov.uk/government/publica- 16 Victor Margolin et al., ‘Introduction: Telling the History of
tions/creative-industries-economic-estimates-january-2015/ Design’, Design Issues 11, no. 1 (1995): 1.
creative-industries-economic-estimates-january-2015-key-
17 Fallan, op. cit., xvii.
indings.
18 Walker, op. cit., ix.
8 Sarah Lichtman, ‘Reconsidering the History of Design
Survey’, Journal of Design History 22, no. 4 (2009): 345. 19 Lee S. Shulman, ‘Pedagogies of Uncertainty’, Liberal
Education 91 (2005): 19.
9 David Thistlewood, ‘Introduction’, in Histories of Art and
Design Education: From Cole to Coldstream, ed. David 20 Mike Tovey, Design Pedagogy: Developments in Art and
Thistlewood (Burnt Mill, Harlow, Essex: National Society for Design Education (Farnham: Gower Publishing, 2015), 1.
Maya Oppenheimer
21
21 Alain Findeli, ‘Rethinking Design Education for the international, market-driven need for improved training via
21st Century: Theoretical, Methodological, and Ethical drawing.
Discussion’, Design Issues 17, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 8. 33 Daniela N. Prina, ‘Design in Belgium before Art Nouveau:
22 Ibid., pp. 15, 9. Art, Industry and the Reform of Artistic Education in the
Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Design
23 In making this statement, of histories over history, I pay
History 23, no. 4 (2010): 329–350.
homage to past editors who have taken up this discussion.
See Mervyn Romans, ‘Introduction: Rethinking Art and 34 Ibid., p. 333.
Design Education Histories’, in Romans, Histories of Art 35 Alain Findeli, ‘Design Education and Industry: the Laborious
and Design Education, pp. 11–18. Beginnings of the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1944’,
24 See Houze and Lees-Maffei, op. cit., and Penny Sparke, Journal of Design History 4, no. 2 (1991). 97.
‘Introduction: Twentieth-century Design and Culture 36 Findeli explains that the ‘availability of unsalaried teachers
Revisited’, in Introduction to Design & Culture: 1900 to the and the spirit of initiative of students avid for initiation into
Present, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013), 1–9. modern art, architecture and design constituted the princi-
25 Mary S. Morgan and Margaret Morrison, ‘Models ple resources’ of this arrangement over the separation into
as Mediating Instruments’, in Models as Mediators: speciic curriculum based on specialized design disciplines.
Perspectives on Natural and Social Science, eds Mary Ibid., p. 100.

S. Morgan and Margaret Morrison (Cambridge: Cambridge 37 Susan Bittker, ‘[Education] Report on a Survey of Recent
University Press, 1999), 14. Crafts and Design Graduates of Scottish Art Colleges’,
26 Mary Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science (Notre Dame, Journal of Design History 2, nos 2–3 (1989): 221.
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 8. 38 Several articles published by the Journal of Design History
27 Artemis Yagou, ‘Rethinking Design History from an are not included in this issue but are worth mentioning for
Evolutionary Perspective’, The Design Journal 8, no. 3 the additional scope they add here. Robin Kinross’ ‘Herbert
(2005): 52. Read’s Art and Industry: A History’, Journal of Design History
1, no. 1 (1988): 35–50, relects upon the inluence of Read’s
28 For a more detailed discussion on deinitions of design see
text on British design. Adrian Rifkin, ‘Success Disavowed:
Fallan, op. cit., ix.
The Schools of Design in Mid-nineteenth-century Britain.
29 Stephen Bayley, Art and Industry, London: Boilerhouse (An Allegory)’, Journal of Design History 1, no. 2 (1988):
Project, 1982. 89–102; Jonathan M. Woodham, ‘Managing British Design
30 Stana Nenadic, ‘Designers in the Nineteenth-Century Reform I: Fresh Perspectives on the Early Years of the Council
Scottish Fancy Textile Industry: Education, Employment of Industrial Design’, Journal of Design History 9, no. 1
and Exhibition’, Journal of Design History 27, no. 2 (2014): (1996): 55–60; Annalisa B. Pesando and Daniela N. Prina, ‘To
115. British training comprised of three pathways: the Educate with the Hand and the Mind. Design Reform in Post-
private art school, societies or local and mechanics’ insti- Uniication Italy (1884–1908)’, Journal of Design History 25,
tutes. Schools and societies emphasized formal training in no. 1 (2012): 32–54: these examine different narratives of
drawing and showings in industrial art—weaving, textiles design education related to national consciousness, cultiva-
and cabinet making—were of lesser interest. Institutes, the tion of consumers and the role of institutions and govern-
forebears of polytechnics, provided curricula for the profes- ment in design education reform, in order to further industry.
sional training of artisans and industrial workers, including Also of note is John Turpin, ‘The School of Design in Victorian
drawing, modelling and lectures. See Stuart Macdonald, Dublin’, Journal of Design History 2, no. 4 (1989): 243–256,
‘Guilds, Societies, Academies and Institutes’, in The History which focuses on the history of the Dublin School of Design,
and Philosophy of Art Education, pp. 17–40. the inluence of the Act of Union, changes to curriculum
and administration, and an increased pressure on drawing to
31 Nenadic, op. cit., 121. Nenadic cites formal design train- improve Irish industry via products and patterns.
ing in Edinburgh since 1760: the Board of Trustees for the
Encouragement of Manufactures and Fisheries founded a 39 Artemis Yagou, ‘First Steps: Early Design Education and
drawing school to improve manufacturing using govern- Professionalization in Greece’, Journal of Design History
ment funds. The Foulis Academy at Glasgow was also 23, no. 2 (2010): 145.
founded around the same time to improve textile design 40 Ibid., p. 147.
and artistic engravings. Ibid., p. 119.
41 Yagou refers to a range of terms used in Greece within the
32 See also Anne Puetz, ‘Design Instruction for Artisans in broader label of design: applied arts, decorative arts, indus-
Eighteenth-Century Britain’, Journal of Design History trial arts, simple arts and ‘brutal arts’—as distinguished
12, no. 3 (1999): 217–239, for a related discussion of an from ine arts.

22
42 Anna Rowland, ‘Business Management at the Weimar 54 Singanapalli Balaram, ‘Design Pedagogy in India:
Bauhaus’, Journal of Design History 1, nos 3–4 (1988): A Perspective’, Design Issues 21, no. 4 (Autumn 2005):
153. 11–22.
43 Ibid., p. 168. Workshops were intended to be eficient and 55 John Steers, ‘InSEA: Past, Present and Future’, in Romans,
business-like with minimal delays and solid scheduling, Histories of Art and Design Education, p. 141.
but this was not always achieved. Student pay was calcu- 56 John Calvelli, ‘Design History Education and the Use of the
lated upon completion of the product to mitigate wastage, Design Brief as an Interpretive Framework for Sustainable
reduce dilettantism across workshops and alleviate poverty Practice’, Design & Complexity: Design Research Society:
of nearly all students. Workshops were not wholly effective DRS 2010, Montreal, 7–9 July, Conference Proceedings,
in generating income. Lack of capital to pay staff and order 2010, 1. Accessed 31 January 2016. http://www.drs2010.
raw materials kept the venture low, as did lack of public- umontreal.ca/data/PDF/023.pdf.
ity and explanatory materials to contextualize the Bauhaus
and prices of products. 57 Annabella Pollen, ‘My Position in the Design World:
Locating Subjectivity in the Design Curriculum’, Design &
44 Heiner Jacob, ‘HfG Ulm: A Personal View of an Experiment Culture 7, no. 1 (2015): 87.
in Democracy and Design Education’, Journal of Design
History 1, nos 3–4 (1988): 221–234. Founding members 58 Kieron Devlin, ‘Is the Academic Essay becoming a Fossil
included Inge Scholl, Otl Aicher (sculptor), writer Hans through Lack of Authorial Voice? The Case for More Stylish

Werner Richter and architect and Bauhaus alumni Max Bill; and Exploratory Writing’, Spark: UAL Creative Teaching &
they wished to pay homage to Hans and Sophie Scholl who Learning Journal 1, no. 1 (2016): 35. As budgets become
were executed for supporting the anti-fascist resistance in increasingly tighter, some UK-based structures are return-
Germany in the Second World War. ing to the previous model of embedding a theory and criti-
cal studies tutor within the studio department.
45 Ibid., p. 233. Of particular interest are comments made by
founding tutor Otl Aicher: ‘The educational model of Ulm 59 For example, see the increase of design PhDs in Germany
is taking shape, based on the technology and science of to compete with changes in European degree bodies:
Design, with the designer not seen as being a superior, but Katharina Bredies and Christian Wolfel, ‘Long Live the Late
rather as a team member in the decision-making process Bloomers: Current State of the Design PhD in Germany’,
of industrial production.’ Ibid., p. 232. Courses included a Design Issues 31, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 37–41. See also
foundation year, information theory and an even divide of H. Alpay Er and Nigan Bayazit, ‘Redeining the “PhD in
theory and practice. Design” in the Periphery: Doctoral Education in Industrial
Design in Turkey’, Design Issues 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1999):
46 Ibid., p. 227. 34–44, who explain a political intervention to control
47 Tim Benton’s writings for the Journal of Design History are teaching and standards in design education. In 1999, Alex
also noteworthy on this subject. See Tim Benton, ‘Multiple Seago and Anthony Dunne advocated a doctoral pro-
Media and Multimedia: Some Possible Options for the gramme that prioritized ‘action research’ over academic
History of Art and Design’, Journal of Design History 9, deinitions of rigour, methodology and originality, but
no. 3 (1996): 203–214, and Charlotte Benton’s review some scholars express concern over the lack of consensus
of the Council for National Academic Awards’ report of subject matter, methods and communities of research.
Technological Change in Industrial Design Education, Victor Margolin calls for frameworks to assure not only the
Journal of Design History 6, no. 3 (1993): 225–226. discipline itself but also students seeking employment: is it
48 Colin Mulberg, ‘[Education] ‘Just Don’t Ask Me to Deine a symbolic or pragmatic qualiication? See Victor Margolin,
It’: Perceptions of Technology in the National Curriculum’, ‘Doctoral Education in Design: Problems and Prospects’
Journal of Design History 6, no. 4 (1993): 302. Design Issues 26, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 75.
49 Melissa Niederhelman, ‘Education through Design’, Design 60 Walker, op. cit., 10.
Issues 17, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 83–87. 61 Walker, op. cit.; Woodham, op. cit.; Fallan, op. cit.; Houze
50 Mulberg, op. cit., 304. and Lees-Maffei, op. cit.; D. J. Huppatz and Grace Lees-
Maffei. ‘Why Design History? A Multi-national Perspective
51 Jane Pavitt, ‘[Archives and Collections] The Camberwell on the State and Purpose of the Field’, Arts and Humanities
Collection of Applied Arts, Camberwell College of Arts, in Higher Education 12, nos 2–3 (April–July 2013): 310–
The London Institute’, Journal of Design History 10, no. 2 330; Tony Fry, Clive Dilnot and Susan C. Stewart, Design
(1997): 225. and the Question of History, London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
52 Ibid., p. 225. 62 John A. Walker, ‘Correspondence’, Bulletin of the
53 Yagou, ‘First Steps’, p. 145. Association of Art Historians (7 October 1978): 3.
Maya Oppenheimer
23
63 Bridget Wilkins, ‘Teaching Design History’, Bulletin of the The essays are Lisa S. Banu, ‘Deining the Design Deicit in
Association of Art Historians (2 February 1976): 7. Bangladesh’, Journal of Design History 22, no. 4 (2009):
64 Philip Barlow, ‘Art & Design History Courses in Polytechnics’, 309–323; Teal Triggs, ‘Designing Graphic Design History’,
Journal of Design History 22, no. 4 (2009): 325–340;
Bulletin of the Association of Art Historians (1 November
Lichtman, op. cit., 341–350; Grace Lees-Maffei, ‘The
1975): 2.
Production–Consumption–Mediation Paradigm’, Journal
65 Philip Barlow, ‘Group for Art History in Art Education’, of Design History 22, no. 4 (2009): 351–376.
Bulletin of the Association of Art Historians (1 November
73 Linda Sandino, ‘Introduction Oral Histories and Design:
1975): 3. See also Jonathan M. Woodham, ‘Designing
Objects and Subjects’, Journal of Design History 19, no. 4
Design History: From Pevsner to Postmodernism’ (paper
(2006): 276.
presented at the Digitisation and Knowledge Conference,
Auckland University, February 2001), and Fallan, op. cit. 74 Victoria Newhouse, ‘Margot Wittkower: Design Education
and Practice, Berlin–London, 1919–1939’, Journal of
66 Johanna Drucker argues waxing attention for design his-
Design History 3, nos 2–3 (1990): 83–101.
tory by analysing Philip Meggs and Richard Hollis’ well-
known histories of graphic design. She suggests the 75 In addition to de Bretteville, op. cit., see Cheryl Buckley,
changing material qualities of these books relect the sta- ‘Made in Patriarchy: Toward a Feminist Analysis of Women
tus of these works both pedagogically and in publishing. and Design’, Design Issues 3, no. 2 (1986): 3–14; Judy
Attield, ‘FORM/female FOLLOWS FUNCTION/male:

See Johanna Drucker, ‘Philip Meggs and Richard Hollis:
Models of Graphic Design History’, Design & Culture 1, Feminist Critiques of Design’, in Design History and the
no. 1 (2009): 70. History of Design, by John A. Walker (London: Pluto Press,
1987), 199–225; Jill Seddon and Suzette Worden, Women
67 Houze and Lees-Maffei, op. cit.; Fallan, op. cit.; Huppatz
Designing: Redeining Design in Britain between the Wars,
and Lees-Maffei, op. cit.; Sparke, Introduction to Design &
Brighton: University of Brighton, 1994; Sue Clegg and
Culture; Fry, Dilnot and Stewart, op. cit.
Wendy Mayield, ‘Gendered by Design: How Women’s
68 Sparke, ‘Introduction’, p. 3; Woodham, ‘Designing Design Place in Design is still Deined by Gender’, Design Issues
History’; Fallan, op. cit. 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 3–16.
69 Huppatz and Lees-Maffei, op. cit., 310. 76 Clegg and Mayield, op. cit., 16.
70 Stuart Kendall, ‘Positioning Design Studies’, Design & 77 Jilly Traganou, ‘[re: focus design] Architectural and Spatial
Culture 6, no. 3 (2014): 345–368. Design Studies: Inscribing Architecture in Design Studies’,
71 Clive Dilnot, ‘The State of Design History, Part I: Mapping Journal of Design History 22, no. 2 (2009): 173.
the Field’, Design Issues 1, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 4–23, 78 Ibid., p. 179.
and Stuart Kendall, ‘The State of Design History, Part II:
79 Lichtman, op. cit., 345, 343.
Problems and Possibilities’, Design Issues 1, no. 2 (Autumn
1984): 3–20. See also Denise Whitehouse, ‘The State of 80 Ibid., pp. 341–342.
Design History as a Discipline’, in Design Studies: A Reader, 81 Steers, op. cit., 141, 138.
eds Hazel Clark and David Brody (Oxford: Berg, 2009),
82 Paula Scher, ‘Great Design is Serious, Not Solemn’,
54–63. TED Talk, May 2008. Accessed 31 January 2016.
72 Hazel Clark and David Brody, ‘The Current State of Design https://www.ted.com/talks/paula_scher_gets_serious/
History’, Journal of Design History 22, no. 4 (2009): 305. transcript?language=en.

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Keywords: design education—design history—epistemology—pedagogy—schools of design

Ethics and Methods: Structures and Experiences of Design

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Introduction: Histories of Design Pedagogy

Research into histories of design pedagogy uncovers a spectrum of debates cantilevered