Design and Covid-19: From Reaction to Resilience

Design has responded to the pandemic by creating systems, services, communications, and products to ensure safety and enable us to carry out our lives. Design and Covid-19 explores how designers developed these systems, services, communications, and products in response to the crisis, including adaptation of designs as communities searched for new ways of connecting and working. It also focuses on recovery and resilience, analyzing the deeper, systemic design response as industries emerge from lockdown.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 08 February 2024
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Design has played a crucial role in responding to the pandemic, offering valuable lessons and approaches for designing for future resilience. In this comprehensive examination, Design and Covid-19 explores the multifaceted response of design to the crisis, encompassing systems, services, communications, and products. The book identifies four key phases of the pandemic, providing insights into how designers developed solutions at various levels, from international to national and community contexts. Contributors from diverse international backgrounds share their experiences, detailing how countries responded to the crisis, implemented social distancing and lockdown measures, developed test, track, and trace systems, and introduced new laws. They also delve into the adaptation of designs as communities sought new ways to connect and work amidst restrictions and social distancing measures, establishing local mutual aid groups and leveraging social media to support one another.

The focus then shifts to recovery and resilience, analyzing the deeper, systemic design response as industries emerge from lockdown. Contributors examine the need to reflect on and investigate key issues to understand the personal, social, economic, and global lessons learned from this unprecedented crisis. Drawing upon the expertise of scholars from around the world, Design and Covid-19 examines a wide range of design disciplines, highlighting the complex societal and global challenges that require innovative solutions.

This book serves as a valuable resource for designers, policymakers, educators, and anyone interested in understanding the role of design in shaping our response to crises and building a more resilient future. By examining the past and present, Design and Covid-19 provides a roadmap for designing for a better tomorrow, fostering a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of design and society.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350266728