- including: Reading Summaries (3 texts), Discussion of Design Object, refined Essay Question and Bibliography.
- The first task requires you to gather and summarise information relevant to your Research Essay. You should choose an Essay Question from the list provided, and read and summarise at least 3 relevant scholarly texts (summaries should be between 200-250 words each). You should draw on recommended texts from the list provided, and you should also search for additional relevant texts in the library catalogue. You will also choose a design object that you plan to address in your Research Essay, and write a short analysis of it (250-300 words). Based on your preliminary research, you may refine your chosen essay question if necessary. Make sure you include a bibliography in Turabian style; listing the texts you have referred to and any further relevant articles that you have found. Overall the Preliminary Research should give an indication of the focus and scope of your Research Essay.
- (up to 1000 words), including: Reading Summaries (3 texts), Discussion of Design Object, refined Essay Question and Bibliography. The first task requires you to gather and summarise information relevant to your Research Essay. You should choose an Essay Question from the list provided, and read and summarise at least 3 relevant scholarly texts (summaries should be between 200-250 words each). You should draw on recommended texts from the list provided, and you should also search for additional relevant texts in the library catalogue. You will also choose a design object that you plan to address in your Research Essay, and write a short analysis of it (250- 300 words). Based on your preliminary research, you may refine your chosen essay question if necessary. Make sure you include a bibliography in Turabian style; listing the texts you have referred to and any further relevant articles that you have found. Overall the Preliminary Research should give an indication of the focus and scope of your Research Essay.
TAD4523 Essay Questions
You should choose one of the following essay questions to focus on for Assessment tasks 1
& 2.
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Sustainability
What do designers need to consider to move towards a “culture of sustainability”? Discuss in
relation to 2-3 examples of design work.
How does design contribute to “greenwashing,” and how can it more effectively engage with
the issue of sustainability? Discuss in relation to 2-3 examples.
Critical Design
What is Critical Design, and how does it engage with its audience? Discuss in relation to 2-3
examples.
Can designers create effective interventions in relation to political or social issues? Discuss
in relation to one particular issue.
How does design anticipate possible futures? Discuss in relation to examples of speculative
or critical design.
Semiotics and the Commodity
How can semiotics be used to critically analyse design works? Discuss in relation to 2-3
examples. You should consider a particular area of design (for instance: packaging or
fashion or advertising or logo design) so that useful comparisons can be made between your
examples.
What is “mythology” according to Roland Barthes? How can we use semiotic analysis to
confront mythologies perpetuated by design objects? Discuss in relation to 2-3 examples.
Urbanism & The Public
How does design shape our experience of urban space? Discuss in relation to examples of
either architecture, public art, or advertising.
How does design contribute to the idea of a “public”? Discuss in relation to at least one
design example.
Socially Responsible Design
What are the principles of Socially-Responsible design? Discuss whether they have been
successfully implemented in relation to 2-3 examples of design works.
How can designers work responsibly in collaboration with different groups and individuals?
Discuss in relation to at least one example.
1
TAD4523 Recommended Texts
These are recommended texts with which to begin your research in your chosen area. All of
these texts are available through the Monash library.
Design and Sustainability
Chick, Anne. 2011. Design for Sustainable Change: How Design and Designers Can Drive
the Sustainability Agenda, edited by Paul Micklethwaite. Lausanne: Ava Pub Sa.
Fry, Tony. 2009. Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice. Sydney:
University of New South Wales Press.
Margolin, Victor. 2015. “The Good City: Design for Sustainability.” She Ji 1, no. 1: 34-43.
Margolin, Victor. 2002. The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Micklethwaite, Paul. 2019. “Design Against Consumerism.” In A Companion to
Contemporary Design since 1945, 436-56. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Smith, Stephanie, and Victor Margolin. 2005. Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art.
Chicago, Ill.: Smart Museum of Art Bristol; University Presses Marketing.
Stoekl, Allan. 2009. “Gift, Design and Gleaning.” Design Philosophy Papers, Issue 1: 1-5.
2
Critical Design
Bardzell, Shaowen, Bardzell, Jeffrey, Forlizzi, Jodi, Zimmerman, John, and Antanitis, John.
2012. “Critical Design and Critical Theory: The Challenge of Designing for
Provocation.” Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 288-97.
New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. 2013. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social
Dreaming. Cambridge, Mass.: The
MIT Press.
Jakobsone, Liene. 2017. “Critical design as an approach to next thinking” The Design
Journal 201:1: S4253-S4262.
Laranjo, Francisco (ed.). 2017. Modes of Criticism. 3, Design and Democracy. Eindhoven:
Onomatopee.
Malpass, Matthew. 2017. Critical Design in Context: History, Theory, and Practices: London;
New York:
Bloomsbury Academic.
Mazé, Ramia. 2016. “Design and the Future: Temporal Politics of ‘Making a Difference’” in
Smith, Rachel Charlotte et al. Design Anthropological Futures: Exploring Emergence,
Intervention and Formation. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 37-54.
3
Semiotics and the Commodity
Barthes, Roland. 1993. Mythologies. London: Vintage.
Baudrillard, Jean. 1998. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. London: Sage
Publications.
Chandler, Daniel. 2018. Semiotics: The Basics. Third edition. New York:
Routledge.
Crow, David. 2010. Visible Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics in the Visual Arts. 2nd ed.
Lausanne: AVA Academia.
Featherstone, Mike. 1990. “Perspectives on Consumption” Sociology 24, no. 1: 5-22.
Gaines, Elliot. 2011. Media Literacy and Semiotics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Grindstaff, Beverly. 2009. “Origins of Unsustainable Luxury.” Design Philosophy Papers,
Issue 2: 1-8.
Houze, Rebecca. 2016. New Mythologies in Design and Culture: Reading Signs and
Symbols in the Visual Landscape. New York: Bloomsbury.
Winge, Theresa M. 2008. “‘Green Is the New Black’: Celebrity Chic and the ‘Green’
Commodity Fetish.” Fashion Theory 12, no. 4: 511.
4
Urbanism and the Public
Aelbrecht, Patricia, Quentin Stevens, and Bobby Nisha. 2019. Public Space Design and
Social Cohesion: An International Comparison. New York: Routledge.
Ball, Timmah. 2018. “Imagining Lisa: Dreaming in Urban Areas.” The Lifted Brow, no. 40:
90-96.
Batista, Anamarija, Szilvia Kovács, and Carina Lesky. 2017. Rethinking Density: Art,
Culture, and Urban Practices: Berlin: Sternberg Press.
Bell, David and Binnie, Jon. 2004. “Authenticating Queer Space: Citizenship, Urbanism and
Governance.” Urban Studies, Vol.41, No. 9: 1807-1820.
DiSalvo, Carl. 2009. “Design and the Construction of Publics” Design Issues, 25, no. 1: 48-
63.
Dovey, Kim. 2016. Urban Design Thinking: A Conceptual Toolkit: London; New York:
Bloomsbury Academic.
Kalms, Nicole. 2017. Hypersexual City: The Provocation of Soft-Core Urbanism: New York:
Routledge.
Madanipour, Ali. 2010. Whose Public Space?: International Case Studies in Urban Design
and Development. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis.
McQuire, Scott. 2008. The Media City, Media, Architecture and Urban Space. Los Angeles:
Sage.
5
Socially Responsible Design
Bardzell, Shaowen. 2018. “Utopias of Participation: Feminism, Design, and the Futures.”
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 25, no. 1: 1-24.
Resnick, Elizabeth. 2016. Developing Citizen Designers. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Rezai, Maziar, and Mitra Khazaei. 2017. “The Challenge of Being Activist-Designer. An
Attempt to Understand the New Role of Designer in the Social Change Based on
Current Experiences.” The Design Journal 20, no. Sup1: 3516-535.
Sheehan, Norm W., Dunleavy, Janine, Cohen Tamar and Mitchell, Sean. 2010. “Denatured
Spirit: Neo-colonial Social Design” in The Havoc of Capitalism: Publics, Pedagogies
and Environmental Crisis, ed. Martin, Gregory, 99-116. Rotterdam; Boston: Sense
Publishers.
Simonsen, Jesper, and Robertson, Toni. 2013. “Participatory Design: An Introduction” in
Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. New York: Routledge, 1-18.
Thorpe, Adam, and Gamman, Lorraine. 2011. “Design with Society: Why Socially
Responsive Design Is Good Enough.” CoDesign 7, no. 3-4: 217-30.
Warwick, Laura. 2017. “Designing Trust: The Importance of Relationships in Social
Contexts.” The Design Journal 20, no. Sup1: 3096-105.
6
General Texts & Other Areas
Axel, Nick, Colomina, Beatriz, Hirsch, Nikolaus, Vidokle, Anton, and Wigley, Mark. 2018.
Superhumanity: Design of the Self. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Buchanan, Richard., Doordan, Dennis P, and Margolin, Victor. 2010. The Designed World:
Images, Objects, Environments. Oxford; New York: Berg Publishers.
Cartmel, Hannah, and Greenaway, Jefa. Blak Design Matters: National Survey of
Contemporary Indigenous Design. 2018. Melbourne: Koorie Heritage Trust.
Helfand, Jessica. 2016. Design and the Invention of Desire. Newhaven: Yale University
Press.
Maeda, John. 2006. The Laws of Simplicity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Margolin, Victor, and Richard Buchanan. 1995. The Idea of Design: A Design Issues
Reader. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Seitz, Tim. 2020. Design Thinking and the New Spirit of Capitalism: Sociological Reflections
on Innovation Culture. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Shelley, Cameron. 2017. Design and Society: Social Issues in Technological Design. Cham,
Switzerland: Springer.
Thackara, John. 2005. In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
