Posts Tagged ‘Books’

A Very Eclectic (and Personal) Reading List


I make a habit of keeping track of what I read for literary (and not-so literary) pleasure.  It started as a way to share favorites with students and friends when memory fails as it often does. (I can remember what I read five years ago, but don’t ask me what I read last month.) Memory not withstanding, this list—which is emphatically not canonical—has over time become an archive of writers I admire, and not incidentally, places and countries I’m drawn to, have lived in and can’t get back to fast enough, or have never laid eyes on in the first place. It will be obvious to anyone who cares to read on that, in fact, I’m not as well traveled a reader as I’d like to be. There is an embarrassing paucity of titles from the southern hemisphere, to name just one region. I am clearly a global provincial—something I plan to remedy by reading even more.
[Susan Yelavich]

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Mind the Gap

2012_3_12_bookcovers
I first heard the expression “mind the gap” on the London Underground.  I thought it so much more considerate than “don’t fall in between the trains.”  In the same spirit of consideration, we offer the following titles as a way of filling some of the gaps that are inevitable in anyone’s design education, given how vast the territory it embraces.  In addition to disciplinary surveys, you’ll also find some critical and historical anthologies in this very condensed compendium. Consider these references as part of the essential underpinnings of design studies.  But only part!  There’s much more to come as you will see in future posts.

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BOOKS



Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945-1976

The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945-1976

I just finished John Harwood’s book The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945-1976 (Minnesota, 2011).

Harwood, who teaches at Oberlin College, does an excellent job of discussing IBM’s design program in an expansive way. Instead of limiting his discussion about what constitutes design, he contends “that the outward appearance of objects is only of secondary importance when considering how these objects (and indeed systems of objects, processes, and concepts) came to be (224).” This perspective allows Harwood to rethink the history of IBM in relation to the interface, or what he defines as the “hinge between the world of things and the world of numbers (9).” (more…)

Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive

Cover of book, title Open Design NowAs an authors of Open Design Now declare, there is a revolution going on in design.

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Program Contact

Caroline Dionne, Program Director

Program Update

Parsons is not currently admitting new students to this master’s degree program. Parsons is now offering a Graduate Minor in Design Studies that is designed to complement the MA History of Design and Curatorial Studies and other graduate programs across the university in design, liberal arts, and social research.