The State of Design History Part II Prob

The State of Design History, Part II: Problems and Possibilities
Author(s): Clive Dilnot

Source: Design Issues, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 3-20
Published by: The MIT Press
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Clive Dilnot
Design Issues, Vol. I, No.2

"Any criticism, to do more
than whining, must make
a diagnosis."
Manfredo Tafuri,
Theories and
History of
Architecture, 1980
I) Clive Dilnot, "The State of Design

His tory, part I: Mapping the Field,"
Design Issues I (Spring, 1984): 4-23.
2) According to Stephen Bayley (In Good
Shape [London: Design Council,
1979]), it is the art form of the twentieth
century. For Victor Papanek, it is the
"conscious effort to impose meaningful
order." (De sign for the Real World
[London: Pala din, 1974), 17.) For
Terrence Conran, the founder of the
Habitat range of stores in Britain and
now chairman of the Habitat-
Mothercare group, design has proved
to be the key to an immensely
profitable business. What bedevils
design discussion is that we pretend that
the differences do not exist. The fact
that each definition or aspect slides
inextrica bly into the next obscures for
us the need to clarify both the real
level of unity between these various
meanings and realities of design, if
indeed one exists, and the sharp
differences in reality between the
design practices founded on each of
these views as well as the concep tions
of "what design is" contained within
them.
3) Dilnot, "State of Design History," 7.
4) This strategy has enormous
advantages for designers. It
immediately reduces design as a whole
to what they are doing at any moment
in time. It is less useful for the
designer's public who may well need
a different kind of design to serve its
requirements. The self-interest of de
signers then should not be allowed to
curtail definitions or articulations of
dif ferent forms of designing.
5) The history of the use of the word
"de sign" in advertising, paralleling a
history of the rise of the concept "good
design," would be extremely revealing.
It would show, first, the way that
"design" has become more and more a
value in its own right over the last fifty
years, and second, the functions,
particularly the complex symbolic
functions, of design in advanced
capitalist societies. On some of
The State ofDesign recent work in design history discussed in part one of this paper 1
that design historians as a whole have at best an incomplete grasp
History of their would-be subject matter. This situation is not wholly sur
PART II: PROBLEMS AND prising, inasmuch as design has acquired several different, often
POSSIBILITIES
seemingly contradictory, meanings and associations because of its
refraction through the still incompletely charted and understood
industrial, economic, and cultural developments of the past 200
years. 2 Design not only suffers from a general unwillingness of the
P culture to grant it the status of an activity worth studying and
r defining 3 -an unwillingness shared by design practitioners who
o want design defined merely in terms of what designers do4 -but
b also from a fundamental ambiguity that the concept of design pos
l sesses. It is not clear whether the term refers to a process (the act
e of designing), to the results of that activity (designed objects and
m images), or to a value ("Design," as in the current advertising slo
s
gan in the United Kingdom, "Miles better by Design," or as in the
notion of "good design"). 5 That this ambiguity extends beyond
o
thinking about design into design institutions is shown in organi
f
zations such as the British Design Council and more generally in
D design education. In neither case is it clear what is being promoted
e or taught: in both cases, and, indeed, professionally, too, design
s seems to be an uneasy melange of all three meanings. The third
i element, design as value, is both the least acknowledged and the
g least defined, and yet is the one used to identify professional
n design and to differentiate Design (capitaliz· · wun, referring to
the professional versions of designing and to specific profes
H sionals or classes of objects and images) from design (lower case,
i a verb, referring to the general activity of designing, shaping,
s form ing, or organizing things, images, or systems, whether by
t profes sionals or not). 6
o
For design historians, this ambiguity manifests itself in a num
r
ber of ways. The different meanings of the word design,
y
them selves reflecting the development of different specialist
Four problems are crucial in
design activities within industrial societies, have given rise to a
the movement toward
consider-
creating a dis cipline of the
history of design. First, it is
3
clear from the survey of
these issues, see Jean Baudrillard, For other or communicating through journals with self-elected readerships. The danger
a Critique of the Political Economy of here is that a fragmented co existence inhibits real debate. Neverthe less it does seem
the Sign (St . Louis: Telos Press, at the moment that to talk about design history in the singular is mystificatory. I, for
1981}, espe cially chapters I, 3, 7, and one, am not at all sure that a single indentifiable •design history" exists.
10. 8) How much might a comparative study of these fields reveal to us about "main
6) For a further discussion of the issues stream" Art and Design school design? This is Noel Lundgren's point in "Trans
involved here, see the useful little portation and Personal Mobility": "It would assist the development of a truly
essay by Noel Lundgren, comprehensive design history industry to realise that, in the twentieth century, design
"Transportation and Personal activity has so much more to do with sustained service, an anonymously mechanical
Mobility," in Leisure in the Twentieth day-in, day-out solving of problems, than with the constant fer ment of creative
Century (London: Design Council, choices exercised by the lone hero-artist."
1978), 20-23. 9) Necdet Teymur, "The Materiality of
7) This was essentially the theme that Design," Block 5 (1981}: 19. There is, I agree, an apparent contradiction in this
arose paragraph. What it tries to express is both the fragmentation of the subject and yet its
from the survey of work discussed unity around an ill-defined and almost mythical entity, "design." Both the
in part I of this paper. Though it can fragmentation and the unity exist .
be argued that design history needs 10} Teymur, "Materiality," 19.
concen tration rather than
diversification (and disintegration?),
the tendency seems to be towards the
latter, with groups of his torians
increasingly speaking only to each
able range of design histories. On one level, it is more accurate
to talk about varieties of design history rather than to see the
subject as a single entity. 7 On another level, design histories have
II) This point is illustrated in almost
every major design exhibition, and by followed the same division of labor that has occurred within
all those books on design constructed design practice. Thus, there is the sharp differentiation between
on a com parable basis. As an
example, see Bayley, In Good Shape. professional design activity that self-consciously concerns itself
with Design as a value; with esthetic criteria in some way,
12) A useful survey of these issues is in
shape, or form; and with all other kinds of design activity, for
Raymond Williams, "Marxism, example, nonesthetically motivated service, engineering, or
Struc turalism and Literary Analysis
," New
problemsolving design and nonprofessional designing. 8 There is
also a grouping of histories around the major professional fields:
4 industrial design, graphic design, and so forth. These groups are
found in the disciplines in art and design schools. In dealing with
post-1945 work, in particu lar, they are separated from
architecture, just as architectural edu cation is so often separated,
at least in Britain, from other art and design education.
However, this does not mean that we see a mul tiplicity of
histories of design activity or a sense of these histories exploring
the different usages of the generic term design. On the contrary,
distinguishing among the various professional fields is virtually
the only conceptual differentiation that the varieties of design
history make. Underlying this there is assumed to be a
unifying sense of what design is, although it is not
satisfactorily articulated. Unfortunately, by assuming the
existence of this entity, the real multiplicity of design practice
is not explored.
Necdet Teymur has argued, "by failing to distinguish the
multi ple content of the term 'design' . . . (and) by dumping
the whole sets of distinct activities and action under one 'act,'"9
design his tory only further obscures the immensely
complex and varied division of labor at the basis of the design
activity. A surface vari ety then obscures a real variety of
activity and processes.
This failure has two effects. First, in glossing over what design
is materially ("a noun and a verb, and also one that denotes a
form of representation, an activity, a practice, a product, etc.,
etc., at one and the same time"), 10 the potential understanding
of design, and, hence, what designed objects are and what
designers do is made much more difficult, if not impossible. If
it is taken as self evident that design is a good thing, that the
values of design are transparently embodied in the form of
products in such a way that we do not need to articulate
them, but merely illustrate the objects, then we can rapidly
produce a canonical history of "good design," but we do not in
the process produce a conscious under standing of "design. "11
This point is of utmost importance. At Cambridge in the
1930s,
I.A. Richards showed, in his famous experiments in practical
criti cism, that the most highly trained students of English
literature could be taught what the canon of literature consisted
of, but they could not produce for themselves its implicit
variations. 12 These findings produced a minor crisis within the
study of literature and led almost directly to the domination
of criticism in literary
Left Review 133 Qanuary/February,
1984): 51-66. See also Terry
Eagleton, Literary Theory (Oxford: Design Issues, Vol. I, No.2
Basil Blackwell, 1983), especially
the intro duction and chapter I.
13) Williams, "Marxism," 53.
14) Williams describes the restriction in

these terms: "So you have in sequence
, first, a restriction to printed texts,
then a narrowing to what are called
"imagina tive" works, and then
finally a cir cumspection to a
critically established minority of
"canonical " texts. (page 53). Does the
parallel to design history hold?
15) Certainly there is no historically
informed design criticism . Unlike
architecture, which takes both
criticism and history seriously, design
criticism is usually merely journalistic
in scope. This may have more than a
little to do with the transitory nature of
most design activity (as against that of
architecture, for exam ple) . As
Manfredo Tafuri has asked: "What is
the significance, for the artistic object,
of the loss of its traditional value as a
thing subject to aging, of its renunci
ation to a life time analogous to that of
a man, to an intrinsic , meaningful
historic ity? Obviously an object
without his toric value lives only in the
present. And the present, with its
contingent and transient laws,
completely dominates its life cycle : the
rapid consumability of the object is
built-in from the very first stage of
planning." Theories and History of
Architecture (London: Granada,
1980), 40.
16) The parallel is the histories of modern
architecture which are always composed
in terms of the modern "masters."
Com pare Charles Jencks's Modern
Move ments in Architecture (London:
Penguin, 1973), or Kenneth Frampton's
Modern Architecture: A Critical
History (Lon don: Thames and
Hudson, 1980). The difference is the
level of discussion of what makes the
"masters" of modern architecture
significant. To say this is not in any
sense to justify this form of history
which is, to say the least, seriously
dis torting of the real relations of
architec ture as a whole in the modern
period . But it is to ommend the much
higher level of critical and evaluative
discussion.
17) Teymur, "Materiality of Design," 19.
18) See John Walker, "The Value of a
Gen eral Model of the Production,
Distribu tion and Consumption of
Artistic Signs for the Study of Art
History," Block 9 (1963): 73-76.
studies. Literature came to be designs and designers is rapidly being established, despite that
redefined in terms of literary the critical arguments for their inclusion in such a list remain
values, and the study of almost unstated. We are seeing this sharp differentiation into
literature came to be "important" and "unimportant" design works, which is tending to
circumscribed to a critically exclude the unimportant works from the definition of design and
established minority of to restrict the material we actually dis cuss. Therefore, the history
canonical texts. This of design in this sense is approaching a recitation of such
development had three "important" works, with the consequences that the historical
consequences: first, it processes that gave rise to them are gradually disappearing.
concealed the "element of The values that the "important" works possess are increasingly
writing, the linguistic being tacitly accepted as lying outside the realm of history. 16
composition of facts and Most important, the whole process tends to obscure,
arguments in the excluded rather than to illuminate, the design process. Thus, the second
areas"; 13 second, it tended to effect of failing to distinguish the "multiple content of design,"
remove from view both the as Necdet Teymur put it, is the paradox of removing both
history of texts themselves history and design from design history! 17 There is a parallel
and the historical processes here with art history. As John Walker recently pointed out, art
whereby the canon of history long ago ceased characterizing art; its real function
English literature is not now is that of constructing a particular tradition or way of
given but produced; and looking at art- the Great European Tradition of Oil Painting
third, it reduced all the texts and the critical concepts associated with this tradition. In this
within the canon and all the sense, art history has as its object of study not art, but the
diverse strands of writing history of art, and, strictly speaking, its produc tion is not that
actually existing, even within of one history of art but different versions and vari eties of this
the restricted forms of writ tradition. 18
This parallel is uncomfortably close to design history as it is cur
ing now studied by
rently emerging. Are the histories being produced today genuine
literature departments, 14 to a
explorations of the history of a field or are they retrospective
single literary identity (even a
con structions of a tradition; that is, lineage studies whose
national identity in the case
aim it has been to extend present trends in design practice back
of English literature).
into history, to claim history for the present? Such a motivation
True, the parallel with has produced important works; for example, Nikolaus
literary studies should not be Pevsner's Pioneers of Modern Design falls in this category.
taken too far. At present, However, the parallel with art history is disturbing for two
there is no real discipline of reasons. First, it indicates how quickly the subject of design
design criticism, 15 but a history has renounced the ambition
canonical list of "important"
5
19) Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 142.
20) Barthes, Mythologies, 142.
of using history to understand design (in narratively
oriented tradition-building history, the subject is always
21) Barthes, Mythologies, 142. In relation assumed; the his torian is concerned with getting the story
to design history, where and when
did design as we now understand it
straight, with "telling it like it was"). Second, it illustrates
emerge? Stephen Bayley (In Good another paradoxical relation ship. Just as, collectively, as a
Shape) has it magically and culture, we are beginning to become more and more aware of
unproblematically appear ing in 1900.
In the standard (mythic?) histories we design, we are simultaneously less and less intellectually
tend to begin with the design reformers conscious of it as anything but design. We have forgotten that
of the 1840s and 1850s. But do we
yet have an adequate study of the design as a practice and as it is embodied in objects and
"design" process in early Victorian images functions, works, and has effects in many different
man ufacturing?
22) Barthes, Mythologies, 142, 143.
ways (economic functions, social effects, cultural
23) Barthes, Mythologies, 143. Design implications), most of which lie outside the concept Design.
in
twentieth century society as a
And, just as there is an increasing hiatus between professional
phenome non beset precisely by those design values and social requirements, there is also an
contradic tions and conflicts that
distinguish soci ety as a whole (for increasing gap between what the word Design evokes for
example the conflict those involved in design practice or design education and what
between the role of design in
corporate management, as against the designed objects and images actually do. In professional
role of design in serving social needs) design practice and design education, and now possi bly in
seems to embar rass most design
historians. It is notice- design history, a mystique of design, an almost mythic and
artificial set of largely esthetic values, is being created. In
6 history, this development has the very real possibility of
turning the writ ing of history into the writing of myth.
Contemporary myth, in this sense, is defined by Roland
Barthes
as "that which is charged with the task of giving an historical
inten tion a natural justification, and making contingency
appear eter nal. "19 This means that the ideology of the modern
capitalist West requires the naturalization of the processes
and structures that characterize it. Capitalism, said Barthes, is
always trying to prove that there are no alternatives. It seeks to
turn what are really his torical developments, which are always
open to change, into natu ral occurrences. Myth is one
mechanism of making this seem to happen. "What the world
supplies to myth is an historical reality
...what myth gives in return is a natural image of this reality.
"20
How does myth work? Barthes lists seven major features.
First, myth is constituted primarily by "the loss of the historical
quality of things: in it things lose the memory that they once
were made. "21 Second, myth compensates for this loss of
history by "abolishing the complexity of human acts." It
gives things "the simplicity of essences. "22 Hence, third, it
builds a harmonious world by organizing a world without
contradictions . . . "with out depth, a world wide open and
wallowing in the evident" (em phasis added). 23 Fourth, myth
"does not deny things ... (rather) it purifies them ...makes
them innocent ...gives them a clarity which is not an
explanation but that of a statement of fact" (em phasis added).
24 Fifth, myth thus "gives (things) a natural and eternal
justification. "25 Sixth, it achieves this by making "things

appear to mean something by themselves. "26 Hence, seventh,
if we "understand political in its deeper meaning, as describing
the whole of human relations in their real social structure, in
their power of making the depoliticized speech where the de- prefix has an active value
world, "27 then myth is representing the opera-
Newsletter 6 (1980): I.
able that Papanek's strictures on the
29) Teymur, "Materiality of Design," 19.
pro fession of industrial design have
30) Roger Newport, "Design History: Pro
not yet been taken up in a genuinely
cess or Product?" in Design History: Fad or Function? (London: Design Council,
critical his tory of the profession. On
the deficien cies of taking the
1980), 89.
evident "common sense" as what
actually is, see Zygmunt Bauman,
Towards a Critical Sociology
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1976) Design Issues, Vol. I, No.2
.
24) Barthes, Mythologies, 143. Barthes
goes
on to say: "If I state the fact .
..without
explaining it, I am very near to
finding that it is natural and goes
without saying: I am reassured."
(Emphasis added).
26) Barthes, Mythologies, 143. As pointed
out above, one characteristic of the
rise
of the design professions has been a con
sequent rise of Design values; design
is now valued less for what it does (the
ser vice acts it performs) than for what
it is (self-evidently a good thing). But
the values that are proposed for design
have less and less to do with the world
outside of itself.
28) This becomes acutely visible, both in
his
tory and in design practice, when we
consider the conceptual separation of
design from social affairs, summed up
in the phrase we so commonly use,
design and society, rather than, as it
should be, design in society. There is a
parallel in the separation design
thinking makes between design
activities and social ones. Thus design
sociology does not exist, nor does an
adequate social history of design,
notwithstanding frequent state ments
to the contrary. Despite the work and
attitudes listed in part I of this paper
("State of Design History," 19-23),
these
are still essentially marginal to much
orthodox design history. As
Jonathan Woodham has argued:
"Design histo rians have frequently
stated how closely their discipline is
integrally linked to fac tors of a social,
political, economic and technological
nature. However, what seems to be
demonstrably lacking in many
exhibitions and publications, par
ticularly those concerning the
modern period, is any strong evidence
to support such an outlook. The
dominating ideol ogy appears to centre
on the notion of the individual
genius who created designed objects
with some unique aes thetic status,
or, alternatively, that design is the
preserve of that section of the
community which possesses the
adequate financial resources to indulge
in it." "Editorial," Design History
Society
tional moment, the sense of history of design is to explore the historical dimensions of what
removing from things their design is; if its aim is to arrive at an informed understanding of
contin gent, historical quality design prac tices with all their "dimensions, agents, variables,
and, in particular, their social products, and processes which exist in a sociophysical whole
origins and efficacy. not free of con tradictions"29 rather than to collapse ways of
How is myth manifested in designing and differ ent varieties of design into a single model or
design history? Most system, then articula tion of this history's subject matter is of first
obviously by priority. It is also the activity that, in refusing the essentialism
the reduction of its subject characteristic of myth, takes the first step in removing the
matter to an unproblematic, discipline from the web of mythical discourse.
self evident entity (Design) Although the distortions involved in the mythification of
in a form that also reduces design seem to focus design history on purely design issues,
its historical specificity and they actually focus design history on only design critical
variety to as near zero as issues. As early as 1977, Roger Newport, the design historian,
possible. This reduction also educator, and designer, was worried about the wider
restructures the history of implications of this development: "As this discipline stands at
design to a repetition of the moment, I am of the opinion that we are not only in danger
designers' careers and to the of becoming less rele vant to our core subject than successive
past as simply anticipating governments have hoped, but we are in danger of enabling
and legitimating the present. design historians to talk a com pletely different language from
In the process, the vast range designers; in danger of setting per manent precedents for our
of designing represented in subject which will enable criteria for
history, professional and criticism to specialize away from criteria for performance.
vernacular, industrial and "30
preindustrial, is eclipsed to a Similar to English professors who criticize literature rather
single developmental model, than write it, design historians rarely produce the goods they
and the process and discuss so avidly. Even design history's critical concepts tend to
activity of designing is refer less to the act of designing than they do to the
largely sundered from its exemplification of design ideas in significant designed objects.
social roots. 28 What Roger Newport pointed to was the effect this has on the
This process scarcely historians' conception of what their pedagogic role and function
matters if legitimation of the might be. As Newport hints, histo rians are actually in danger
present is what history is of becoming alienated both from the activity and processes of
about. Tacit and essentially designing and, because of this, from the education context in
unexplained concep tions of which they largely work. The fact that some teachers achieve
what design is will suffice. real educational success does not negate this
But, if the ambition of a
7
based" design move ments and "general statements about the appearance and
environment of generic groups of artifacts"- should be able to be overcome. We need a
major program of research and curriculum development in this area to ascertain the
character of a truly viable input into studio design teaching. The quotes are from
Newport, "Design History," 89.
32) There might be considerable value in a
study which for once broke with the conventional link of design history to design
31) The problem is that we are oriented
practice, and inquired instead what possible contributions design his tory might make
above all to the stylistie results of
to academic issues in general. In a subject that has remained obstinately isolationist in
design activity and hardly at all to the
thought and practice, a study such as this could chart, in effect, the wider import of
organiza tional mechanism of the
design activity and the wider evidential quality of designed objects and images. This
process itself. True, there are real
process would in turn throw light on the wider significance of design activity.
problems here, as Roger Newport
33) Little has thus far been done on the
points out. But prob lems such as the
relationship between history in general and the history of design, though some initial
reluctance to "see pres ent day design
reflections are contained in Raphael Samuel, "Art, Politics and Idol ogy," History
and production as part of our subject,"
Workshop 6 (Autumn, 1979): 101-106. Perhaps more interesting is Steven Marcus's
and that of trying to bridge the
marvelous essay on Engels and Manchester, "Reading the Illegible," in The
informational dichotomy between
Victorian City, vol. 2, edited by H.J. Dyos and Michael Wolff (London: Routledge &
"what design students do when they
Kegan Paul, 1978), 257-76. Marcus reveals Engels as a brilliant, if early, design
are designing and the sort of
historian! But he also reveals the potential of a method, the materialist and, in Engels's
information they are presented with in
case, theoretically informed, analysis of struc tures. John Summerson's Georgian Lon
the name of the history of design" - a
don (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1946) is one architectural study which wholly unites
dominance of details of the "art-
general history and architectural
history. point. Such achievements are made against the grain; it is
34) The work of Barthes (e.g. uncom fortable, but true that organizing the concepts of
Mythologies) and Dick Hebdidge
(Subculture: The Meaning of Style design history does not, at present, lend itself to the sort of
(London: Methuen, 1979]) shows some pedagogic work we, as design historians, should be doing. In this
possibilities from the
sense, Roger Newport's argument is only too accurate. 31
In the wider context, the issue refers to the second major
8
prob lem facing the discipline: defining what design
history's roles should be and who its potential audiences are.
And who should they be? Should design historians write for
themselves or for pro fessional designers? Or is their role
principally in design educa tion? If so, what, if any, is the
relationship between historical study and studio education?
Or should design history be consid ered as a wholly
academic discipline, 32 or, perhaps, as a contribu tion to
design studies- the historical dimension of design studies'
attempts, so far profoundly ahistorical, to analytically and
logi cally model the design process? Or is it better to think of
design history as a part of history in general? But, if so, what
kind of con tribution should or could it make? Is it, or would
it be, merely a minor, if useful, subsection of economic, social,
and technological history? Or might it be a more significant
contribution, a different way of reading or comprehending
history ?33 In its twentieth-cen tury guise and its more
theoretically informed aspects, does not design history
potentially deserve to be linked with cultural studies and
the sociologies of media and culture, even with aspects of
anthropology and archeology ? 34 And, finally, as a history of
"things seen," what might its relationship be to art and
architec tural history and to the histories of the decorative
arts?
One answer is that the subject, at least potentially, has
some function in all or approximately all of these contexts,
and some contribution to make to all or approximately all of
these disci plines. To say this only strengthens the necessity
of articulating and defining what these roles or functions
might involve. It brings into question the issue of one design
history or many design his tories; of what, if the latter is the
case, the central core uniting these histories might be (what
are the central issues of design his tory?), and of what a
design history that is accented in this com plex way might
look like. Certainly, such a history would have the potential
to bridge some extrordinarily interesting interdiscipli nary
issues. Might this then be a more profitable direction for the
subject to take than concentration on an almost entirely self-
refer ential specialist discipline of the history of design?
This leads to the third of the central problems that design
histo
rians face. Only when we have defined possible and desirable
roles for design history can we set about solving the problem
of con structing a discipline that can address itself to roles in
a specific manner and that can develop the status and meaning
of the subject in relation to wider academic, public, and
professional issues. 35
The question of design history is a crucial one. At present, there is no real
constructing a discipline of intellectual core that
side of cultural studies. The
integration of cultural studies with 42) On capitalism's effects on production
design history has not taken place. per se, see G. Lukacs, History and Class
What could design historians bring to
the study of contem porary material
culture? On archaeol ogy, D. L.
Design Issues, Vol. I, No.2
Clarke's Analytical Archaeol ogy
(London: Methuen, 1968) is an
interesting theoretical account. His
models of "culture systems" and the
place of artifacts in them may well
be useful for constructing a theory of
design history.
35) For a discussion of the problems
in
a comparable discipline, see Eugene
Ferguson, "Towards a Discipline of
the History of Technology,"
Technology and Culture 15 (Spring,
1974): 15-30.
36) But as E.D. Hirsch has pointed out
with respect to a similar situation in
literary studies, "that manouvre will
not work, for anti-theory is itself a
theoretical posi tion and a particularly
vulnerable one at that." "Derrida's
Axioms," London Review of Books
5 no. 13 Ouly 21-
August 3, 1983):
17.
37) For an introduction to Marxist

perspec tives, see Robin
Blackburn, editor, Ideology in Social
Science (London: Fon tana, 1972).
38) For the Annales school, see, above
all, Fernand Braudel's trilogy
Civilization and Capitalism in the
15th - 18th Cen tury: vol. 1, The
Structures of Everyday Life; vol. 2
The Wheels of Commerce; vol. 3, The
Perspective of the World (London:
Collins, 1984). See also Lucien Febvre
and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming
of the Book (London: NLB/ Verso,
1976).
39) See the work of T.J. Clark and
Michael Baxandall referred to below.
40) Gareth Stedman-Jones, "History: The
Poverty of Empiricism," in Ideology
in Social Science, 97.
41) Stedman-Jones, "History," 97.
defines the subject and its undergraduate design history courses, the real integration of
aims. The first generation of insights and methods from other disciplines has been post
design his torians working in poned. With some exceptions, design historians have
Britain in the 1970s remained markedly impervious to the conceptual schema and
deliberately eschewed defi interpreted methods offered to historical study by classical
nitions, methodological sociology, the developments that have emerged from French
inquiry, and theoretical self- structuralist and semiotic thought, and the revolutions in
reflection on the laudable, historiography and his torical interpretation wrought by
if somewhat misplaced, Marxism 37 and the Annales School in France. 38 Even some
grounds of keeping the of the more significant develop ments in art history have been
fledgling subject as open ignored or their potential signifi cance has not been
and pluralistic as possible. understood. 39
However, what replaced This has had the additional effect of leaving largely intact
these absences could only be the conceptual moribundity and the essentially Victorian
a self-evident empiri cism epistemol ogy that are the bases for the continuing dominant
that took its guiding focus on "great men and the institutions they created,
concepts from the given modified, or resisted. "40 This mixture of liberalism and
assumptions about design positivism contributes to the emphasis on sensible empirical
history and design practice. realities. According to this view, the job of history is to
This empiricism has left the ascertain the facts, and facts are deemed to be the events that
subject with several "resulted from the action of individuals produc ing them
problems. It through the frame work of institutions. "41 Therefore, it is
has led first to a "commonsense" that this kind of history should focus on these
defensiveness by design events. But what this approach fails to take into account is
historians and to a refusal to that many of the more crucial determining issues (determining
engage in debate. of the whole character of design in the industrial period), for
Intellectual culture thrives example, the determination of the form of the design process
on argument and contention, by the com plex necessities demanded by industrialization in
but orthodox design general and by capitalist industrialization in particular, 42 are
historians have responded to not empirically given and cannot simply be uncovered by the
the frequent critiques of study of the facts.
methods, aims, and 9
approaches of the subject
only by pointing out the
genuine research problems it
faces or, less validly, denying
the importance of concepts,
ideas, and methods
altogether. 36
In a similar fashion, design

history has turned its back on
other
academic disciplines.
While extolling the
potential interdiscipli nary
nature of the subject
and making some
attempt to acknowledge
the importance of the
economic and the social by
incorporating economic and
social history into the
syllabi of the British
Consciousness (London: Merlin, 1972), Some evidence for this argument can be found when trying
especially pages 83-222; Ernest
Mandel, Late Capitalism (London: to understand the pattern of professional design practice since
NLB/Verso, 1974); and Immanuel 1945. Empirical studies of, for example, the different forms of
Wallerstein, His torical Capitalism
(London : NLB/ Verso, 1984). design organization that have arisen since 1945 -the rise of the
consul tant designer, the parallel rise of in-house design teams,
and the increased investment poured into design efforts -can
describe these developments but they cannot explain them. To
move from description to explanation demands that we
understand the reasons why these developments took place. To
do this, we need to be acquainted with economic history: notions
of "technological rents," demand management, and capital's
securing of the control of the whole product cycle (not merely of
the sphere of production in the nineteenth century); of the
expansion of planning and organizational abilities, the
demands placed on the latter by the intensification of the
turnover rate of capital and the speeding up of the product
43) For details of all these concepts, see cycle; and of the increasing differentiation and organization
espe cially, Mandel, Late Capitalism.
of consumption. 43 At a deeper level, these are the "collective
facts" of the designer's situation. They explain, or help to
explain, the powerful economic circumstances that determined,
in a general sense, the directions that industry moved in after
1945, and they hint, even at this level, at the forms that design
44) On this whole issue, see Clive Dilnot, activity necessarily took in order to work with and help
•Design, Industry, and Economy Since develop these circumstances. 44
1945;An Overview," unpublished paper
presented to the 1981 Annual Design activity since 1945 can be explained by paying attention
Confer ence of the Design History to the main motors of economic-industrial motivation in this
Society, London.
period. However, resistance to "theory" and to concepts brought
45) On this complex but essential problem, in from other disciplines or areas is often rooted in the dislike of
see T.J. Clark, "The Social History of the idea that the imported concepts are merely background.
Art, " chapter I in Image of the People
45 However, factors such as those described in this article are
(London :Thames and Hudson ,
1974). not background: on the contrary, they are foregrounded in the
actual organization of design since 1945, and they appear in the
objects and images that result. If circumstances do not coerce
form, they are certainly often manifest in form. Conversely, the
very fact that forms, including forms of design organization,
do manifest cir cumstances means that they are also evidence.
In embodying the complex and diverse circumstances that gave
46) The phrase is Walt er Benjamin's. rise to them, often in powerful and frequently unusual patterns
The idea of "constell ations" is
discussed at length in Susan Buck- or "constellations, "46 designed objects and images, as well as
Morss , The Ori gins of Negative the forms the design pro cess takes, have an archeological
Dialectics (Hassocks: Harvester,
1977), 82ff, and in Buck Morss, status. 47 For example, the exhibi tion Design since 1945, held
"Walter Benjamin , Revolution ary recently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, if considered from
Writer," part I in New Left Review
128 Quly/August, 1981) and part II in the point of view of the history of the design professions is
129 (September /October, 1981). archeologicall y valueless. Such an exhibit misses the point that
47) This is literally so. The linguistic
obses sion of our time, which decrees
the significance of designed forms is not given by their
that only texts or statistical groups of empirical classification, but rather by the status of mean ing
figures con stitute "evidence,"
naturally decries the image or object as
assigned to them or won from them. In other words, designed
a source of evidence. The point is dealt forms possess no intrinsic value. Their import and significance
with below, especially in note 68. is not given by their designer status but is achieved because of
48) This explains why exhibitions of design
are so often a failure. While one may what can potentiall y be won from them in terms of evidence
get and in terms of understanding. 48 The point then, which
leads to the
10
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All use subject to JSTOR Term s and Condition s
pleasure from the contemplation of Design Issues, Vol. I, No.2
the "well designed object," it is wholly
illus ory of exhibition organizers to
assume, like the formalist curators of
art muse ums, that the works on
display will somehow self-evidently
reveal their import. In most cases they
will not.
49) It therefore ultimately depends on the

conception we have of the importance
of design activity in the formation,
organi zation, and ideological
patterning of human societies. For a
succinct debate with some reference to
this point, see Hebdige, Subculture,
chapter 1. See also Clive Dilnot,
"Design as a Socially Sig nificant
Activity: An Introduction," Design
Studies 3 Uuly, 1982): 139-46, and
Wojcieck Gasparski, Designing
Human Society: A Chance or a
Utopia? (Warsaw: Department of
Praxiology of the Polish Academy of
Sciences, n. d.).
50) T.J. Clark, "The Conditions of Artistic

Creation," Times Literary Supplement
(May 24, 1974): 561-62. The quotation
from Lukacs's reification essay comes
from History and Class Consciousness,
p. 153.
fourth, and in some ways adequately comprehended) when the individuality, the
the most crucial, problem that uniqueness of an epoch or historical figure, etc., is grounded
design history faces, is that in the character of those structural forms, when it is discovered
the significance of design and exhibited in them and through them.' That passage is
history as an activity depends haunting for several reasons
not on the extrinsic ...but let's simply look at that curious phrase 'the really
significance of the objects impor tant historians of the nineteenth century,' and the
and phenomena we deal with, way the exam ples come to mind include two art historians
but on the conception we out of three names cited! What an age this was, when Riegl
and Dvorak were the real historians worrying away at the
have of what design history is
fundamental questions - the conditions of
capable of revealing about
consciousness, the nature of 'representation.' And Lukacs
design itself in all of its
could have looked around him in 1922 and pointed to the
complexity and about the
debate going on, unresolved, sharpened, often bitter. The roll
circumstances from which
call of names -Warburg, Wolfflin, Panofsky, Saxl,
forms of designing emerge. 49
Schlosser -is not what matters exactly. It is more the
Writing in 1974 on what he
considered to be the crisis of sense we have, reading the best art history of this period,
art his tory, T.J. Clark tried of an agreement between pro tagonists as to what the
to approach a precisely important and unavoidable questions are. It is the way in
similar problem. which the most detailed research, the most arcane discoveries,
Asking "why should art lead back time and time again toward the terrain of
history's problems matter? disagreement about the whole nature of artistic production
On what grounds could I ... (about the) conditions of artistic creation ... (the
ask anyone else to take them questions of) the artists' resources and his materials. "50
seriously?" Clark said that to There are two aspects to this issue. First, Clark rightly argues
answer that question, "I have that the success of a discipline is distinguished by the adequacy,
to remind you, remind range, and vigor of the questions practitioners ask of their mate
myself, of what art history rial, not the details of research schema or debates over marginal
once was." He also stated: problems and issues that historians confront in their day-to-day
"There's a passage from work. Problems, not empirical data, are central: it is the concep-
Lukacs's great essay of
11
1922, Reification and the visual space, but it is still visual space that it
Consciousness of the mathematizes; it is an ordering, but an ordering of visual
appearance. And in the end it is hardly more than a
Proletariat, that will do to
question of emphasis whether the charge against
conjure up an alien time: 51) Clark, in "Conditions,"
perspective is that it condemns "true being" to the
page 561, has a
'And yet, as the really appearance of things seen, or that it binds the free, and as
wonderful quotation
it were, spiritual intuition of form to the appearance of
important historians of the from Panofsky that he
things seen. Through this location of the artist's sub ject
uses as an example of
nineteenth century such as what he thinks are the
in the sphere of the phenomenal, the perspective view
closes to religious art the territory of magic within
Riegl, Dilthey, and Dvorak vital, dialectical,
which the work of an is itself wonder-worker ... but
"modes of argu ment,
could not fail to notice, the habits of mind"
it opens to religious art ... the ter ritory of the vision,
within which the wonderful becomes an immediate
essence of history lies necessary to recovering
expe rience of the spectator.'" Panofsky's lovely
a serious an history:
precisely in the change "Take this example
quote demonstrates the interac tion of "modes of
thought" and concep tions of the significance and
under gone by those from Panofsky's
meaning of the phenomena we explore.
marvelous Perspective
structural forms which are 52) Clark, "Conditions," 562. Of course,
as Symbolic Form
the focal point of man's Clark also notes the external factors that bear on this,
published in 1925. He
particularly an history's relation to the art market and
interaction with the is talking here about
the "distor tions" in the subject's ambitions this has
the ambiguity of
environment at any given perspective, the way it
induced.
53) Fiona MacCarthy, A History of British
moment and which makes the visual
Design, 1830 - 1970 (London: George Allen and
world objective,
determine the objective measurable, and yet
Unwin, 1976).
nature of both his inner and makes it dependent on

the most subjective
outer life. But this only point of refer ence, the
becomes possible (and single all seeing eye:
'It mathematizes ...
hence can only be
tion of what the beliefs, certain putting the questions in a quite
subject is about unquestioned different form ... we need to import a
and the modes of presuppositions: new set of concepts and keep them in
54) Walter arguing, even the notion of the being- build them into the method of
Benja Artist, of the work. "52
min, "habits of mind,"
"These which are brought artist as 'creator' In education particularly, but also in the
s on of the work, the design professions, design history is called
the to the work that
Philos originate the notion of a pre- on to legitimate particular forms of con
ophy
arguments and existent feeling- temporary design practice. Such was the
of
History demand answers for form, for thrust of A History of British Design:
," in
to questions. 51 space, of the 1830-1970, by Fiona MacCarthy, 53 and
Illumin
world as God's or In Good Shape, by Stephen Bayley. The
ations Second, Clark
(Lon the god's significance here is less the writing of
don: contrasts this
Fontan evocation directly creation- which history for a particular purpose or for
a,
and by implica the work was declared aims and ambi tions than it is the
1970),
257. tion with the there to 'ex scope of the questions and the implications
current position press.'" But, and issues of the material. MacCarthy's
in art history: "It "these beliefs and Bayley's books are dangerous for
55) Lukacs,
seems to me that eroded the design history because of the essential
History
and these questions subject; they poverty of conception about the material
Class
have been turned ques tions they are dealing with. In this sense, both
Consci
ous scrapped by art into answers ... books try to limit and reduce design
ness,
history now. and needless to history and its potential.
153.
And perhaps we say the beliefs- Walter Benjamin put the point at its
ought to ask what the sheer vulgar most extreme in 1940 in his final Theses
made it possible metaphysic- are on the Philosophy of History when he
to pose them at all all that present- argued that "only that historian will have
1
2 ... and why did day art history is the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the
the problems die? left with past who is firmly convinced that even the
Why are we left ... To escape dead will not be safe from the enemy if
from this he wins. "54 Less messianically, Lukacs,
with carica tures
situation ... we whom Clark quotes, reads the"essence of
of certain
need a work of history" as lying within "those structural
proposals, (with)
theory and forms which are the focal point of man's
arguments that
interac tion with the environment at any
have been turned practice. We need
given moment" and which deter mine "the
into methods?" facts ... but we
objective nature of both his inner and
Clark's answer to need to know
outer life. "55
this was brutally what questions
Lukacs's "difficult and fertile" thesis
simple: "Why? to ask of the
argues effectively that his tory can be
Because as I have material ... comprehended with most acuity through
hinted already, (and) we have to the develop ments of the cultural forms
the terms in which discover ways of that mediate people's relations with
the paradigm 56) On this point, see Painting and Experi ence in Fifteenth Century Italy: A
problems were Raymond Williams, Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (London:
Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 1972).
posed were 58) Michael Baxandall, Limewood Sculptors
Fontana, 1981), chapter
incapable of 3. of Renaissance Germany (New Haven: Yale University
renovation." Press, 1980).
He continues:
"The old
questions of art
history were
structured
around certain
57) Michael Baxandall, 59) Baxandall, Painting and Experience, I.
nature and with who made the social life of the period: " ... the
other people, picture, or at least carvings being some times addressed as
rather than in supervised its lenses bearing on their own
terms of events. 56 making. On the circumstances. The suggestion is not that
When these forms other side there one must know about Renaissance
are political was somebody Germany to enjoy the sculpture, but that
institutions, we who asked him to the sculpture can offer a fresh focus on
60) Baxand are used to reading make it, provided the cultural history of Renaissance
all, funds . . . and, Germany" 60 (emphasis added).
Limewo history this way.
od
However, when after he had made Baxandall explained some of the ways
Sculpto
rs, vii. these forms are it, reckoned on in which this two-way process occurs:
using it in some "A society develops its distinctive
considered as
way or other. skills and habits, which have a visual
artifacts, more
Both parties impact, since the visual sense is the main
particularly
worked within order of experience and these visual skills
designed artifacts,
institutions and and habits become part of the medium
we are less used
conventions - of the painter: correspondingly, a
to seeing history
commercial, pictorial style gives access to the visual
interpreted
religious, skills and habits and, through these, to
61) Baxand through things,
all, perceptual, in the the distinctive social experience. "61 Of
Paintin much less through
g and widest sense course, this quotation describes only the
Experie the design of
social - that bones of the argument; it becomes
nce, things.
152. influenced the simultane ously the introductory
Yet, why not?
forms of what hypothesis and conclusion to an
Michael Baxandall
brilliantly pointed they together argument of fascinating complexity and
to the pos made. "59 scholarship. However, the impor tant
sibilities of However, point, one that Baxandall himself
focusing on Baxandall also emphasized, is that by adequately
artifacts as reversed the examining the circumstances surrounding
cultural forms in proce dure, artistic pro duction and the development
Painting and suggesting that a of visual and critical skills, a
62-) Experience in history, such as framework is created for a genuine
Baxandall,
Painting Fifteenth Century that of the continuity between social his tory and, in
and
Itall 7 and then in limewood this case, art history, "each offering
Experience,
1. The Limewood sculptors of insights into the other. "62
Sculptors of southern
Possibilities
Renaissance Germany, can
of a History
Germany. 58 In offer an of Design
these books, introduction to What Clark and Baxandall have in
Desi Baxandalllocated the sculpture common is the commitment to
gn paintings or itself, as well as a reading the objects and images they deal
Issue sculptures within means of looking with as evidence. 63 For
s, the culture and through the
Vol. society in which sculpture into the 13
I,
they emerged: "A 63) At the end of Painting attentive Word/That arms and nourishes the Mind."
No.2 and Experience, (page 153.)
fifteenth century Baxandall quotes the 64) Buck-Morss , "Walter Benjamin," (!),
painting is the opening lines of a play 70.
by Feo Belcari of 65) Buck-Morss, "Walter Benjamin," (!),
deposit of a Florence, acted in 1449: 70.
social "The Eye is called the
first of all
relationship. On 66) Clark, "Conditions," 8.
gates/Through which
the one side there the Intellect may learn
was a painter and taste/The Ear is
second, with the
, yet determined; it
certainly gives the both of them, art insights are necessary if the historical
illusion of the provides "a imag ination is to be fed, and the visual is
67) Baxand autonomous pro fession
holding to its "own" critical here the proper complemen tary to the
all,
Paintin
values, yet it is the iconography for verbal. "67
development of the
g and
system that has created
deciphering But what of design? The most
Sculpt
this apparent autonomy material significant aspect about design is that it is
ure ,
and independence. produced, received, and used within an
152- history," 64 and for
This, perhaps, accounts
53. for the reason why both, "the emphatically social context. The social is
design, so often the relationship of
handmaiden of the
not external to the activity, but internal to
economy, can often material reality to it and determining of its essential features,
appear (but only appear) esthetic even of its sense of relative autonomy. 68
to distance itself from it
68) On the . expression (is) As Phil Goodall has recently argued,
latter, 69) Phil Goodall, one of mutual "De sign values, whether they are
see "Design and Gender,"
Lukacs Block 9 (1983): 58. demystification. defined as utility, functional form, or an
, Elements of esthetic of appearance, are produced by
History
material history cultural, social, and economic priorities,
and
Class (were) required in policy, and action. They themselves act
Consci
order to interpret to produce and prescribe the social
ousness
, 103. artworks so that relations of the sphere of repro duction,
Lukacs
these cultural the material form of the home and the
explain
s that 'treasures' ceased social relations of household members . . .
in the to be ideological put simply, design for use is design of
process
of the accoutrements of use; as such design deposits preferred
develop the ruling class. users, defines them within the parameters
ment of
But the obverse of the material and technical possibilities
special
skills (is) true as well. of the object. "69
and The essential field of design's meaning
techniq
"65 The image or
ues, the object and import, therefore, is not the internal
capitali world of the design profession, but the
provides a
sm
creates 14 crystallization of wider social world that produces the
the role the complex and determining circumstances within which
of the
subtle processes designers work, as well as the conditions
speciali
st who of cultural that lead to the emergence of designers.
then, as Although historians of the specialist pro
a part formation . For
of the Clark, "the fessions may wince, the potential field of
develop
process of work the history of design can be widened
ment
further, encroaching, perhaps, on their
of the creates the space
division territory . Pos sibilities of a history of
of
in which, at
design hinge almost entirely on the
labor, certain moments,
constru signifi cance that design as an activity has
an ideology can
cts in had in human societies. From this
ever be appraised. "66
increas
perspective, to the extent that design is
For Baxandall,
ing viewed only as a pro fessional activity
autono the work (for
autonomous from social developments,
my the example, a
apparat the activity loses meaning and
us of fifteenth-century significance. The paradox here is that it is
the painting) offers just at this point, at the rise of industrial
"indepe
ndent"
"an insight into society, that the import of design activity,
pro what it was like, measured in terms of its effects on
fessions
intellectually and people's lives, radically increases. This is
. This
indepen sensibly, to be a a ludicrous situation that suggests our
dence Quat trocento
is both
whole comprehension of de.;ign must
genuine person . Such alter radically. We need to move from
percei embodied in Without Architects
(London: Academy design in the much broader Papanekian
ving certain groups of Editions, 1973), which sense as, "the conscious attempt to impose
design objects and in cer is quaintly sub-titled,
in a way that perfectly meaningful order ...the planning and
as a tain individuals, illustrates our pattern ing of any act toward a desired
set of but essentially prejudices: A Short
foreseeable end, "70 and that sees
values always within Introduction to Non-
pedigreed Architects. professional design as a particular
and the locus of the 73) The most obvious of
estheti these conditions are historical form of this more fun damental
design
c or
the factory system and activity.
professions, to an the division of labor.
stylisti What value might this shift in perspective
alternative view, For useful surveys of
the industrial system have? The first and
c to one that and some of its most important issue is that it
criteria considers implications, see
industrial or Maurice Dobb, Studies immediately makes the status of
professional designing, in the Develop ment of professional design activity relative. 71 It
and to separate Capitalism (London:
Routledge
is arguable anyway that the importance of
professional designing
70) Victor from its roots in older & Kegan Paul, 1963), this activity has been exaggerated. As a
Papane and wider processes of and Eric Hobs
k, bawm, Industry and number of architecture and design
planning and making
Design buildings and objects, Empire (Har theorists have recently pointed out, the
for the mondsworth: Penguin,
Real
the reinsertion of
1969).
vast majority of buildings, objects, and
professional designing
World into this wider context 74) But do we have to images have not been built or designed by
(Londo accept also the form
allows us to have a
that this takes in our
architects or professional designers. 72
n: critical perspective, to
Paladin meas ure both what
societies? Uncritical Professional design, therefore, becomes
, history would in effect
was gained and what
argue that what we do
simultaneously less important and more
1974), was lost for designing
17. in the evolution from
for it is written as if important. It is less important because
what had hap pened was
the complex of craft
destined to happen and
the world has sur vived in the past
designing processes to
industrial designing.
could not have been almost without it, and certainly without
otherwise. But in that
So far, save for case, it removes from
it in its current form, which is the
nostalgic laments for history both the possi crucial issue, and because even its
71) It also the loss of crafts bility of alternatives,
returns manship, design and the fact, as
achievements (for example, those of
the
activity
historians have shown architecture) pale by the side of the
little interest in this
to
problem. The issue, as Design Issues, colossal vernacular design effort that
history.
Rather
an important historical Vol. I, No. 2 built much of the world, at least, before
problem, has been
than
opened up by the beginning of this century. It
seeing
the
concerned designers. becomes more important, in an
See, for example,
emerge
David Walker and
ontological sense, because although this
nce of
industri
Nigel Cross, Design: perspective ridicules the internalist
The Man-Made
al
Object, units 33 and 34
disputes and issues of profes sional
designi
ng as a
of course TIOO, "The designing, it also brings out the fact that
Man-Made World: A the age of vernacu lar designing is over.
given
Foundation Course"
evoluti The cultural modernization and
(London: The Open
on ary
fact, a
University Press, rationaliza tion of European societies,
1976), and Nigel
view
Cross, Design and when wedded to an active and free
that
both
Technology, unit 9 of capitalism, set in motion a series of
course T262, "Man-
tends
Made Futures: Design events, including most dramat ically
to anni
hilate
and Tech nology" industrialization, that broke the cultural
(London: The Open
the
University press,
conditions under which vernacular
history
of
1975). See also design operated. 73 This means that there
Christopher Alexander,
pre- is no choice now but to accept design in
Notes on the Synthesis
industri
al
of Form (Cambridge: its industrial sense. 74
Harvard University However, the critical perspective being
designi
Press, 1964).
ng as developed here makes evident the need to
72) The most popular
irreleva
nt to
version of this view is be more skeptical and to interpret the
probably Bernard
underst
Rudofsky, Architec ture recent history of industrial designing as
anding
very essential. Without dimensionality of development of a more adequate
nearly accepting that fact, this approach criticallan-
a a critical inhibits the
15
catastr perspective on
Stephen Yeo says, that it has sometimes assisted uncriti cally in furthering the
ophe. designing in the development, progress, domain of opti mised technology, but also in the
75 industrial age and evolution involve sense that many of its more intelligent mem bers have
"power, struggle, abandoned traditional prac tice, either to resort to
Despite cannot be interests," and that such direct social action or to indulge in the projection of
achieve developed. On the "com petition and architecture as a form of art." Frampton, Modern
struggle involve loss
ments positive side, and defeat as well as
Architecture, 280.
77) Compare the product designer Jay Doh lin: "Although I
by without this wider growth; presents (sic] designed hundreds of successful products for major
individ involve running over corpora tions, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't
view there is no unrealized but partly know what I had been doing." Jay Doblin, "What
ual standard to surviving pasts and Designers Do," Designer Uune, 1980).
designe measure the temporarily blocked 78) Note Michael Baxandall's list of some of the
futures." (Stephen Yeo, circumstantial realities operating for the limewood
rs or (largely symbolic) "State and Anti-State; sculptors of Southern Renaissance Germany; "The
in successes of Reflections on Social forms and potentialities lying hidden in their limewood,
Forms and Struggles the functions the sculpture served which are complex
certain various from 1850," in and sometimes unexpected, the mixed satisfactions
small individuals, design Capitalism, State looked for in the pre-reformation image, the patterns of
Formation and Marxist professions and markets in which its makers lived, the
and groups, or Theory, edited by Philip different kinds of roles open to craftsmen in a
usually companies: Corrigan [Lon don; European market moving untidily away from a late
Quartet Books, 1980), medieval guild, some ver nacular skills and habits of
exclusi genuinely good 113].) In other words, visual dis crimination peculiar to South Germany
ve design simply is uncritical history removes
sectors, assimilated to a from view the fact that
16
the form of things is
whethe weak tradition of always con tingent,
r it be professional "good always produced, from
special interests,
housin design," and the circumstances, and
g, human aspects of struggles; that is to say, it
tries to describe how
transpo genuine design and why they have come
rta tion success are lost. about and it shows how
other alternatives might
system On the negative have been possi ble.
s, or side, ignoring Above all, it tries to
the reality and stop the "clo sure
utilitari concentrating between possibility and

what is." It does this by
wholly
an, using history to
on the glossy demonstrate that
symbol institutional and
professional
ic, and organizational forms, like
world produces a visual ones, are never
esthetic
stultifying eternal and contain the
failures seeds of alternative forms
compla cency; buried within them.
of most not only. do 75) By the term "industrial
consu success and designing" I mean all
mer professional design
failure become activities carried on in
goods, measured simply industrial societies, not
industri by professional
just the specific
industrial design
al standards rather profession.
designi than by those of 76) Consider a parallel
example from the case
ng any larger group of architecture; "No
does (and both account of recent
developments in
not become all too architecture can fail to
deserve often assimilated mention the ambivalent
approb to fashion and to role that the profession
has played over the
ation. a simplistic notion last decade- ambivalent
76 This of progress), but not only in the sense
that while professing to
point is the one- act in the public interest
guage and the like, failure on the prevented their generalization? What force
and of when these large scale and has intervened to separate such
unders designers produce the brilliant dramatically "high" and "low" design? By
tandin glossy textbook successes comparison, what conditions in the
g images to occasionally preindustrial world ena bled a working
itself. illustrate the achieved, to map continuity to be formed between the
After "currently high the central values of "high" design, as represented
all, level of graphic historical features by the major architects, their patrons,
why design"? of the and the most fashionable decorators and
unders These are contradictory tastemakers, and the vernacular abilities
tand historical implications of of everyday making and building? What
design, questions. design in the cultural rift intervened to construct design
Behind them lurk
when industrial period, as a distinct pro fession? What function
massive histor
it and to explain the was design meant to fulfill, and could that
ical implications.
clearly historical origins function be fulfilled within the possibilities
At the most
produc of this bizarre given by the economic circumstances of
extreme, the
es an situation. 79 current design (circumstances that in the
writing of a
endles What are the indus trial period have acted to force
history of design
s collective facts of ways of working that have been almost
in the industrial
succes the circumstances wholly inimical to the development of an
period that
sion of surrounding design adequate process and ethic of industrial
essentially
"great in the past two designing)? Or, does the wider political
celebrates the
produc centuries? How do economic context in which designers must
suc cession of
t they differ from operate so distort the collective
"name" designers
design those dominant in circumstances of design that in the wider
and the rise of the
" ? 77 the preceding public sphere, at least, the very possibilities
design
Why periods? What of design in any meaningful sense vir tually
professions, but
worry circumstances have disappear ? 80
that carefully
about pro duced the Using Clark and Baxandall as examples
selects its images, provided two empha
the extraordinary
eschews real ses: one was the importance of the
bizarre flashes of design
critical comment. overall critical orientation of the subject
distorti creativity that
While snuggling (what matters is the questions asked and
on of have periodically
intimately with the definition of problems) and the other
tal ent lit up the post-
the idea and the was the importance of the continuity of
that eighteenth century
image of the pro art or design history and social history, if
sucks design worlds?
fessions, it keeps properly handled. In
many Equally, what has
of the its distance from
in 1500, a period of would archae ologists in a thousand years make of a
most many if not most group character and "Pompeii" of any Main Street USA? Design, which has
of the cir even of individuality helped to produce the material culture we are surrounded
inventi itself." (Baxandall, by, is no exception. The present organization and
ve cumstantial Limewood Sculptors, functioning of the design profes sions, as Papanek
young realities of design vii and 164, com has pointed out (Papanek, Design in the Real World,
posite quotation by 32-
design in the industrial the author.) It is 35) is almost criminal in its irrationality and waste of
ers period. 78 On the instructive to mentally talent and resources. The precondition of genuine
compare this list, which history writing may be the necessity to critically stand
into less extreme side,
is not exhaustive, with outside, as well as within, the phenom ena we try to
the the more difficult the range of explain.
and more phenomena discussed 80) What then of a history of design of those production
expens in some recent works of circumstances where there has been virtually no
ive important kind of design history. recognized input of professional designers? What would
produc history would 79) The word is deliberately such a study tell us in absentia, as it were, of the character
chosen. Perhaps and actual range of influ ence of modern-day professional
tion of have as its task we cannot easily see design? This is perhaps the real import of Pevs ner's An
baked- to understand this just how extraordi nary Enquiry Into Industrial Art in England (Cambridge:
a culture we have Cambridge Uni versity Press, 1937).
bean dichotomy
spawned since we are 81) Baxandall, Limewood Sculptors, vii.
ads between the immersed in it. What 82) Goodall, "Design and Gender," 58.
83) Just Method, edited by
how Robin Jacques and addition, objects article has argued that it is very dif ficult
much James Powell [Guil or images were to hold simultaneously an orientation to
so is ford: Westbury
given House, 1981], 30-47.) presented as the design profes sions, whose entire
by the More recently, Nigel evidence: in value system eschews the social, and to
case of Cross of the British
design Open University's Baxan dall's the wider, social sense of the activity and
studies. design discipline, in words, as "lenses its human, rather than sim ply design
In an otherwise very
fifteen interesting editorial in bearing on their professional, import. 83 The solution
or Design Studies, own posited was to view these issues in a
twenty referred to three areas
circumstances. wider setting, to hold to the wider
years of design knowledge:
of design epistemology, "81 Papanekian concept of design, and to
work design methodology, view professional design as a specific
on and design pheno
Yet Clark and
design menology (i.e. the Baxandall are art his torical form intimately related to
method knowledge of "how historians, and shaped by the cultural, industrial,
s and people design ... although and economic revolutions of the modern
design [of] the tactics and
Baxandall,
researc strategies of period.
h, designing . . . [and emphasizing as
design that residing] in the In the investigation of these two
he did the
sociolo products themselves." concepts, both a critical under standing of
gy (Nigel Cross, Design functions of
remain Studies 5 no. I
what was gained and lost in the evolution
images, can be
s (1984): !), but not to of industrial designing processes, habits,
wholly the context in which brought eas ily
and skills and a more sensitive histor ical
undeve all this takes place, and productively
loped. namely the social. On understanding could be gained. Rather
Bruce this, see Clive into the sphere of
than presenting a one dimensional,
Archer, Dilnot, "Design as a design history.
Profess Socially Significant exclusive study of the internal
This article has
or of Activity," 139-46. development of the design professions,
Design 84) One interesting example presented the
Resear of this approach is the article has posited a critical debate
idea that what
ch at Manfredo Tafuri's focusing in particular on the relationship
the Architecture and distinguishes
Royal
between the design professions and the
design is its con
Colleg
Design Issues, circumstantial realities that determine
e of tinuity with the
Art in Vol. I, No.2 their character and the relationship of
social, not just in
Londo the profession to the society in which it
n, does terms of oper ates. 84 It has referred to a complex,
not representation,
include critical, and multidimensional form of
the but in terms of a history that takes its significance from
social more active role the Papanekian view of design "as the
study
of with designed primary underlying matrix of life" 85 and
design phenomena. from the argument that design is
within
his Designed forms "arguably the only way that man decides
review "act to produce his material future. "86 It balanced this
of the
possibl
and prescribe against the specific historical study of
e field ... social two events: the rise of the design
of
design
relations ... professions within the history of
researc design for use is industrial capitalism, including the history
h. design of use. "82 of the rise of a design culture 87 , and the
(Bruce
Archer, But does changing form and charac ter of the
"A assuming the full
View design process itself. The latter was
of the impli cations of examined from the point of view of its
Nature this fact create professional institutional form and in
of
Design something of a relation to the wider, more diffuse
Resear crisis in design understanding of it as a complex of pro
ch, in
Design history's cesses by which an environment or
: comprehension of object is transformed, first, according to
Scienc
e:
design? This some apperception of a desired result 88
and, meaning and in our time is wizened,
dangerous, and corrupt images, and forms of design activity.
secon functions are pre cisely because it has Despite the attempts that some designers
d, embodied in a lost the dimension of
have made to wrest design away from
meaning. But design is
with new form. 90 distinguished from determina tion by the twin demands of
meani Three concepts are technology, which in
industrial organization and the capitalist
ng, 89 important here. truth is merely an
The first is the idea aspect of design, market, and despite the professional
so that precisely because its job "relative autonomy" enjoyed by the
of the
its is to endow technical
design disciplines, design in the indus
historical matrix, solutions to material
transf problems with out trial age is inconceivable outside of this
the determination
ormati human meaning,
matrix. What this matrix limits and
to ground, within significance, and
on is enables has determined the sphere of
the history of content.
not industrial
90) On functions, and for
mainstream design practice since the
the most useful lit
merel capitalism, the tle diagram and concept beginning of the modern period. What
y history of design
the historian can begin
from, see "the function is of interest, to paraphrase Manfredo
quanti as a history of complex," in Papanek, Tafuri, is the identification of those
ta tive design professions Design for the Real
World, 17-31. tasks that capitalist and industrial
but and of 91) Tafuri, Architecture and development have given to and taken
qualit professionally Utopia, 7.
92) On technology as such from design. 91 Equally, as a way of
ative; designed and a projection, see writing a history of industrial capitalism,
its evolved objects, Herbert Marcuse,
"Industrialization and
a history of the socio-economic forces
new
17 Capitalism in the Work that have shaped everyone's life during
of Max Weber," in
Utopi ns and critics. See, for
Herbert Marcuse,
the past two centuries, design becomes
a: example, essays in
Negations (Lon don: the evidence of the complex ways in
Design Emilio Ambasz, editor
Penguin, 1968), 201-
and Italy: The New which both rulers and ruled have
226.
Capita Domes tic Landscape projected ideas about technology,
93) A useful discussion of
list (New York: Museum
these kinds of issues is progress, and, above all, ways of life,
Develo of Modern Art, 1972),
contained in Dolores
p ment and Piero Sartogo, into objects and environments. 92 Design
Hayden, Redesigning
(Camb editor, Italian Re-
ridge: evolution: Design in
the American Dream: has been the major agent in this shaping
The Future of Housing,
The Italian Society in the Work, and Family Life or endowing pro cess, if not the force
MIT Eighties (La Jolla, CA:
Press, La Jolla Museum of
(New York: Norton, determining the content of what has been
1984). Together with the
1976). Contemporary Art, same author's Seven pro jected through objects, buildings,
85) Papane 1982).
k, 88) This means that
American Utopias: The and so forth. 93 Therefore, how design has
Design Architecture of
for the
design is a matter of Communitarian mediated this process is of great interest.
Real knowledge: of values, Socialism, 1790-1975 94
World, schema, desires, hopes, (Cambridge: The MIT
7. aspirations, facts. The Press, 1976) and The
However, the distinction between the
86) Newpo technicist approach of Grand Domestic design process and what
rt, our culture has tended
"Desig
Revolution: A His tory is projected through it is somewhat
to make light of this of Feminist Design for
n component of design American Homes, illusory. In the modern period, the rise of
History ing. Design too is
," 89.
Neighborhoods, and "independent" design values, the
taught essentially as Cities (Cambridge: The
87) The
technique. One job MIT Press, 1981), this "autonomy" of design, and the changing
interact
ion of
of the history of book is a model of forms of design organization should be
design is to recover critical, involved design
this design-as-knowl edge. history applying itself taken into account. The rise of design as
culture
with
For an excellent to real socio-economic, a significant factor on its own account
essay on this theme, political, cultural and
cul ture
see Edwin T. Layton, design problems. has given great importance to the
in
"Technol ogy as patterns of how design has been
general
Knowledge,"
seems
Technology and
organized and promoted. 95
a
Culture 15 (1972): 31- 1 At this point, the evident and much-
speciali 8
41.
st discussed art-design values and the openly
89) The same point applies
subject
to the question of stated professional values, as well as the
of
study
meaning. A technicist more epis temological, ideological,
culture has tried to
by
erode meaning from cultural, and political presuppositions that
Italian
historia
design, to make design guide design work, should be examined. 96
like technology, which
These ng in the formalist laborers themselves, the
presup tradition that 94) Mediation is a crucial of High Capitalism (London: NLB/ Verso, 1973), and
posi designers and concept in cultural One Way Street (Lon don: NLB/Verso, 1979). For
studies. See Raymond an intro duction to the Frankfurt School, see Martin
tions design histo rians Williams, Culture Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (London:
and have not realized (London: Fontana, Heinmann, 1973), and the anthology of writings
1981), and Marxism of the school, edited and with an introduction by
their the full and Literature Paul Connerton, Critical Sociology (Har
teasing implication or (Oxford: Oxford mondsworth: Penguin, 1979).
98) Yeo, "State and Anti-State," 112.
out importance of the Univer sity Press,
1977). See also, Janet 99) One curious designer who has not is Buckminster
from concept. Design Woolf, The Social Fuller. See J. Mellor,
the as we are most Production of Art editor, The Buckminster Fuller Reader
(London: Macmillan, (London: Cape, 1970).
design familiar with it is 100) Newport, "Design History," 89.
1981).
materia focused on giving 95) A history of the rise of 101)On this, see Mike Cooley, Architect or Bee: The
the design journal Human/Technology Relation ship (Slough:
l that import to the form as the vehicle for Langley Technical Services, 1979), for a
we of things. At projecting the ideology very important discussion of the design and
or the value of human implications of new technology and work
work worst, this focus patterns.
"design" would be an
with degenerates into enormous contribution 102) See Cristopher Freeman and Marie
pure design to understanding the Jahoda, World Futures (Oxford: Martin Robertson,
are profession's self- 1978).
what estheticism; a promotion of design 103) See Clive Dilnot, "Transcending Science and 'Anti-
valid, stock values. To map the Science' in the Philosophy of Design," in Design:
supply Science: Method, edited by Robin jacques and James
changing values, ideas,
the criticism of the and beliefs expressed Pow ell (Guilford: Westbury House, 1981).
public most banal or communi cated in
text and graphic layout
raison versions of Design Issues, Vol. I, No.2
could, in a sense, map
d'etre design history is the history of the
of this that this focus profes sions. Is the

history of design
historic deals only with literally contained in
al the most the glossy pages of
Domus or Industrial
study. superficial issues Design?
This of form and style. 96) Compare much of the
process We might also work discussed in part

one of "The State of
realize that the
makes obsession with
Design His tory," 19-
23. But this work is
people form that distin largely in its infancy.
aware guishes the We are still at the
stage of searching for
of the design adequate concepts
crucial professions hides and methods.
97) Form is a wholly
import deeper and more neglected area of study.
ance of important When not reduced to
implications. formalism (as in
the American art criticism
form Historians of of the 1950s and
of material and 1960s,) it is generally
ignored. The new
things. social culture work in cultural
97 have shown that it studies, such as the
work of Dick Hebdige
The is the forms in
listed in part one of
concep which needs are this paper, is
t of met that exploring the field,
whose first real
form characterize a investigators were the
is so soci ety or Critical Theorists of
the Frankfurt School,
basic culture. Stephen
especially Benjamin
to Yeo provides an and Adorno. See, for
design example with example, Theodor
Adorno, Minema
and so respect to Moralia (London:
denude production: NLB/Verso, 1974),
Walter Benjamin,
d in "Cooperative
Charles Baudelaire: A
meani factories of the Lyric Poet in the Era
dominant and the all three levels of character of large-scale technical and
Cooper
other recessive this process; they environmental systems will be made in
ative
would not be the are thus unique the face of increasing complexity and
Whole
same as one in interpretive adversity, with greater implications for
sale
which the rules records not only of human lives, 102 the impor tance of
Society
were reversed. the design process, design as a process that can potentially
(1863),
"98 It would be a but also of enable a rational but qualitative
and
mistake to read forming in the decision to be made can hardly be
local
this example of wider sense. overexagger
retailin
g co-
forms and Roger Newport's ated. This is an historical move. If the
forming as vital statement first four-fifths of this cen
ops
belonging to a that design is tury were dominated by the image of
have
different order "arguably the only beneficial technical progress such that all
been
from the material way that man rights to determine the character of things
ways
and esthetic form decides his and system were abrogated to technology
of
ing of things that material future" pure and simple, then the growing
produc
design deals 100 explains why disillusion with the human and systemic
ing,
with. This this concept is so results of this process have been
distrib
conscious potentially sufficient to impel greater interest in
uting, alternative, yet rational, schemes of
ordering of significant for the
and technical organization and the shaping
materials and public and for
using of material culture. Design has then
elements of social designers. What
basic necessarily come to the fore. In this
life for human he meant is
goods context, where a much fuller and more
ends is indivisible simply that design
such adequate conception of design needs to
from the essence is the only way to
as be articulated (given that the dominant
of humans as determine the
food, models conform either to the
transformative quantifiable level
soap, technological image of design as science
beings, defined of material
or or design as technology or refuse this and
by their ability to development and
clothes model design as purely an expressive
transform a given the form, the
, as art), 103 studies of design's history could
environment in shape, the
have scarcely be more important. Therefore,
congruence with character, and,
Marks several fundamental issues need to be
desired patterns therefore, the
and recovered and elucidated. These are the
of organization human
Spence material efficacy of design activity and
and meaning. implications. 101 In
r and designed systems, 104 the ideological
This, in turn, is a culture in which,
Unilev implications of design, the significance of
fundamentally of necessity, more
ers. forming as an activity, and ther signifi
identical to the and more cance of the forms of objects and systems
Howev
design process. decisions about in relation to their social
er,
The professional the future
they
design process is 19
are
a particular 104) See Teymur,
obviou "Materiality of
variant that has
sly not Design," for a detailed
narrowed its discussion of this.
the
global scope in
same
favor of the
ways .
development of
.. a special skills and
society abilities. 99
in Designed
which things or images I 05) Gasparski, Designing Human Society.
one mirror or embody
was
and human design, despite the hopes of ahistorical,
implications. In asocial design researchers awaits the
addition, other histori cal dimension. Without the
I 06) This
definiti important issues grounding that only historical study can
on, as are the skills, give, prescriptions for design are
cited
earlier, knowledge, and incidental; they cannot be redeemed
is abilities built up because they lack the necessary
Stephe
n
within immersion in real his torical complexity.
Bayley professional and Too many utopias have died in this
's. Just nonprofessional century by ignoring or repudiating
as 20
Christo design practices history. If design historians are to create
pher and the what Wojciech Gasparski has called the
Alexan
der has significance of the "designing society" 105 we are going to
insiste form of things. All need a subtle and sophisticated
d that
design
of these aspects comprehension of designing to carry
metho have a history and through the ambition. This
ds
cannot
all of these comprehension in turn needs history.
and histories are That is why history is significant to
should relevant to the
not be
design fu ures, although not at all to the
studies comprehension question of "design as the art form of the
in and then the twentieth century." 106
isolatio
n from construc tion of a
designi design process or
ng,
(Notes
a designing
on the attitude that can,
Synthe
sis of
perhaps, take
Form, society out of its
preface current crisis.
, 1971
edition If who said what
), to whom at the
should Museum of
we
equally
Modern Art in
insist 1956
that is all that design
design
history history is about,
cannot then the problems
and
should
discussed in this
not be article do not
studied
matter. However,
in
isolatio if what design
n from historians are
the
urge to doing is adding
design vital socio-
and
shape historical
things? understanding to
the attempts to
understand design
activity, then their
role is very
important indeed.
Certainly, the full
comprehension of

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The State of Design History, Part II: Problems and Possibilities

Author(s): Clive Dilnot

Design Issues, Vol. I, No.2

I) Clive Dilnot, "The State of Design

13) Williams, "Marxism," 53.

14) Williams describes the restriction in

20) Barthes, Mythologies, 142.

justification. "25 Sixth, it achieves this by making "things

37) For an introduction to Marxist

In a similar fashion, design

49) It therefore ultimately depends on the

50) T.J. Clark, "The Conditions of Artistic

nature of both his inner and makes it dependent on

utilitari concentrating between possibility and

of this that this focus profes sions. Is the

process We might also work discussed in part

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