One of the reasons, why I am only now writing my second blog entry is, because I did not have a lot of time lately and another one is the difficulty to find scientific and other usable sources for a master’s thesis from a design topic. Since the design world does not seem to focus as much on science as other fields it proves to be extremely difficult to do good research on specific design-based topics. Maybe this is just my own feeling, but has anyone else experienced this? Or am I just going about it in the wrong way? Anyways, here are some sources I have recently found and want to check out (if I am in any way able to get my hands on any of these):
Bieling, Tom (ed.): Design (&) Activism: Perspectives on design as activism and activism as design. Hythe: Mimesis International 2019.
Coker, Coleman and Gamble, Sarah: Environmental Activism by Design. California: ar+d publishing 2023.
Erlhoff, Michael and Rezai, Maziar (eds.): Design & Democracy: Activist Thoughts and Examples for Political Empowerment. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH 2021.
Fuad-Luke, Alistair: design activism: beautiful strangeness for a sustainable world. London: Earthscan 2009.
Meharry, Jessica (ed.): Design as Acitivsm. September 13-14, 2024. Symposium Proceedings. Institute of
Design at Illinois Tech. California: ORO Editions 2024.
Place, Alison: Feminist Designer: On the Personal and the Political in Design. Massachusetts: MIT Press 2023.
Shea, Andrew: Designing for social change: Strategies for community-based graphic design. New York City: Princeton Architectural Press 2012.
In my last post, I have compared design activism to socially responsible design and I have tried to find clear definitions for each of the topics, which proved to be extremely difficult. This is why I came to the conclusion that depending on the context both areas differ slightly. Where design activism focuses on longer lasting change, socially responsible design usually refers to more current topics and usually shows immediate change that does not last as long.
I have the feeling that there are either several more similar approaches going around or different names are used for socially responsible design, which makes it more difficult for me to really understand what is included in this field of design. To completely discern the differences between these two approaches I will try to find more resources on socially responsible design, if possible. I hope that I will be able to get more access on important resources on my topic and I’m looking forward to share more findings in my next blog posts with you.
hi flora i want to comment that i totally feel u about just writing ur second blogpost. its really hard to find anything credible and not just keep repeating the same 3 sources over and over and also not everyone works the same way when it comes to something as important and huge as a masters thesis… i cant get in the zone at all when we had a million other projects up until now, so i feel like if i really want to produce good research i need time to sit down and focus on that only. i knew from the start that weekly posts were impossible for me since it takes hours trying to find a source.
so yeah ur not alone! lets keep going forward (￣^￣ )ゞ
hi,
thanks for the reply, yes it is really hard to find good sources and also to keep working on it, even though it’s just once every week or so, this definitely does not help to get you in the zone. The problem is I just want to do research that somehow matters to my topic and not put sources and things in that I cannot even use in the future, because then I have to rework everything I wrote here even more.
I feel you, and I’m trying to keep going now! We can do this! 🙂