Design Issues: How Graphic Design Informs Society
Design That Is Firmly Grounded in Society / As Demand for Socially Responsible Design Writing Grows, Founders of Acclaimed "Design Issues" Column Reach Out to New AudiencesThe "Design Issues" column in the respected Communications Arts Magazine is known for attracting some of the country's best design thinkers and practitioners—and for drawing an ever-growing crowd of design aficionados to magazine stands. Encouraged by the column's fourth year of unbroken popularity, Communications Arts and column editor DK Holland have decided to reach out to a broader, more general readership and have teamed up with publishing house Allworth Press to release thirty-three of the best articles. Provocative and with unpre-cedented candor, this unique collection of essays pushes design another step forward on its recent course from an elite craft to a socially conscious and relevant form of expression.In DESIGN ISSUES, twenty contributors, ranging from hard-core designers, illustrators, and advertising strategists to artists, writers, and educators, look at contemporary design in a critical, ethical, historical, social, and often humorous context. The voices that come together in this thought-provoking volume are marked by an uncompromisingly critical perspective as they discuss issues such as: designing the shape of brands that are unscrupulously promoted on school grounds; the implications of the global branding warfare; design's role in the blurry outcome of the Presidential ballot; designers' uneasy relationship with reading and language; how graphic design can foster—or undermine—social developments in this world, and much more.