Designerly Ways of Knowing: A Working Inventory of Things a Designer Should Know

Design thinking has created divisions in the discipline, with some feeling lost and turning to rhetoric to keep power at bay. Danah Abdulla's updated list of Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know is meant to spark conversations, prompt critical thinking, and help designers reconfigure their discipline. It is not meant to be a definitive how-to guide, but to inspire creative production in easy-to-pitch ways.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 64 pages
Publication date: 29 March 2022
Publisher: Onomatopee

Design thinking has divided the field into two camps: those who are too theory-driven and those who are merely practitioners. Those who feel lost can easily turn to a language that is meant to inspire creative production in easily digestible ways, where rhetoric uses design to keep power at bay, to celebrate hegemonic beliefs that are used to indoctrinate designers in bad education, incapable of imagining different futures. If you take away the post-its, the A3 papers, and the markers, can designers think? Led by Antonio Gramsci's advice that knowing thyself requires compiling an inventory, design critic, educator, and researcher Danah Abdulla pays tribute to the late architect, activist, and critic Michael Sorkin, whose original list of Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know inspired this updated version targeted at designers. The iterative list is not meant to be a definitive how-to guide, but to spark conversations, to prompt critical thinking, and to help designers reconfigure their discipline.

About the Author:

Danah Abdulla is a Palestinian-Canadian designer, educator, and researcher interested in new narratives and practices in design that push the disciplinary boundaries and definitions of the discipline. She is Programme Director of Graphic Design at Camberwell, Chelsea, and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts (University of the Arts London). She has previously held positions at Brunel University London and London College of Communication (University of the Arts London). Danah obtained her Ph.D. in Design from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a founding member of the Decolonising Design platform. In 2010, she founded Kalimat Magazine, an independent, nonprofit publication about Arab thought and culture. Her research focuses on decolonising design, possibilities of design education, and the role of design in social justice.

Design thinking has created divisions in the discipline, with some designers being too theory-driven and others being merely practitioners. Those who feel lost can easily turn to a language meant to inspire creative production in easy-to-pitch ways, where rhetoric uses design to keep power at bay, to celebrate hegemonic beliefs that are used to indoctrinate designers in bad education, incapable of imagining different futures. If you take away the post-its, A3 papers, and markers, can designers think?

Led by Antonio Gramsci's advice that knowing thyself requires compiling an inventory, design critic, educator, and researcher Danah Abdulla pays tribute to the late architect, activist, and critic Michael Sorkin, whose original list of Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know inspired this updated version targeted at designers. The iterative list is not meant to be a definitive how-to guide, but to spark conversations, to prompt critical thinking, and to help designers reconfigure their discipline.

Danah Abdulla is a Palestinian-Canadian designer, educator, and researcher interested in new narratives and practices in design that push the disciplinary boundaries and definitions of the discipline. She is Programme Director of Graphic Design at Camberwell, Chelsea, and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts (University of the Arts London). She has previously held positions at Brunel University London and London College of Communication (University of the Arts London). Danah obtained her Ph.D. in Design from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a founding member of the Decolonising Design platform. In 2010, she founded Kalimat Magazine, an independent, nonprofit publication about Arab thought and culture. Her research focuses on decolonising design, possibilities of design education, and the role of design in social justice.

Dimension: 254 x 114 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9789493148802