Jan van Toorn (Ed.)

Design beyond design. Critical reflection and the practice of visual communication

1998

English — 192 pp — 170 x 245 mm — colour and b&w illustrations

ISBN 90-6617-224-x

Out of print

Design beyond design. Critical reflection and the practice of visual communication is devoted to the discrepancy between the socio-economic and symbolic reality of the worldwide information and consumer culture and the prospects for a democratisation of the media. More in particular, it deals with the role of practical intellectuals as visual producers in this development. It concentrates on a communcation design that deliberately aims at ‘abolishing the boundaries between everyday and aesthetic experience’ and puts the strategies and forms of expression of the operational and reflexive traditions on the table for discussion. Initiatives in areas outside the preserve of official design are discussed, as well as dialogic forms of visual communication within design aimed at the formation of independent opinion and participation.

Contributions by: Dawn Barrett, Andrew Blauvelt, Gui Bonsiepe, Max Bruinsma, Susan Buck-Morss, Cees Hamelink, Alex Jordan, Els Kuijpers, Carel Kuitenbrouwer, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Heinz Paetzold, Gérard Paris-Clavel, Jörg Petruschat, Rick Poynor, Michael Rock, Susan Sellers, Jan van Toorn, Teal Triggs, Lorraine Wild among others.