What is Design Culture?
Design Culture, as an academic field, studies of the interrelationships between design artefacts, in all their manifestations, the work of designers, design production (including marketing, advertising and distribution), mediation and their consumption.
It is therefore about formal characteristics (what artefacts look like), how these are formed and the various meanings and functions that design performs.
We are living through amazing times. Digital media, biotechnologies, sustainability, demographic trends, migration and urbanization, globalization, changing personal and political structures are all opening new challenges and possibilities for design.
There is unprecedented growth of the use of design throughout the world. At the same time, design practice is becoming increasingly demanding. The profession requires advanced, creative thinkers who can understand complex circumstances and propose innovative responses.
Journalists, curators, designers and other specialists increasingly talk of ‘design culture’ to describe the circumstances in which design is developed, circulated and used as well. So we can think of it as both an academic form of enquiry and a descriptive term.