85502 Chap.1 Introduction to Design Histories
Introduction to Design Histories
Design inside its contexts
The opening week treats design as something that both emerges from and operates within historical, social, cultural, political and economic forces.
That means following objects into production, labour, communication, consumption, reuse and waste, not only celebrating famous designers.
Two readings about Australia
Tony Fry’s 1988 introduction and Simon Jackson’s 2006 article both question the search for a national design style and the myths built around rural icons.
The first academic skill
Critical reading of academic texts and the basics of APA 7 referencing start here and run through every later week.
Every later week assumes these habits: placing an object in its contexts, reading a text for its claims and its silences, and citing sources correctly.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Design as entangled in historical contexts
- 02
Making the familiar strange again
- 03
Fry (1988) and the claim about Australian design
- 04
Jackson (2006) and national design myths
- 05
Critical reading questions for any text
- 06
APA 7 in-text citation basics
Worked example · free
Apply the critical reading questions to a short claim
- 1Name the claim: the label treats one product as proof of a national character, which is exactly the kind of design myth Jackson (2006) examines.
- 1Ask who wrote it and for whom: a museum speaking to a public audience, often in a celebratory register.
- 1Ask what is missing: who manufactured and sold the clothes line, who did the laundry it served, and how a domestic object came to stand for national identity.
- 1State a historian’s addition: Fry (1988) would treat such accounts as material needing historical interrogation, not as finished history.
Key terms
- Design history
- The study of designed things, systems and practices in their historical contexts, including how they were made, used and discarded.
- Critical reading
- Reading that asks when, by whom and for whom a text was written, what it claims, and what it leaves out.
- Design myth
- A celebrated story about an object that serves an identity or agenda more than it reflects the object’s history.
Introduction to Design Histories FAQ
What does ‘make it strange again’ mean in this subject?
It means taking objects, histories and everyday things you think you understand and looking closely at the power, materials, production, technologies and environments behind them. A familiar object such as a clothes line or a sewage cart becomes a way into questions about work, health, identity and who decides what counts as design.
Why did Fry say Australian design does not exist?
Fry argued that very few products were purely conceived and designed in Australia, not enough to form a movement or style. He was not dismissing local innovation and adaptation, which he thought worth telling, but criticising the effort to package them as an aesthetic tradition and call that design history.
How should I read the Week 1 texts?
Use the subject’s critical reading questions: when the text was written, who wrote it and for whom, where its claims are and whether they are evidenced, who it argues with, and what it ignores. Judge each text within its own period, then say what still makes sense to you and what now seems dated.
What should I do before Week 1?
The Canvas page asks you to log in and read the Get Started module, check your timetable, get an A4 journal and read the two Week 1 texts by Fry and Jackson. Its image of a tape dispenser used in the discovery of graphene is a reminder that ordinary objects can be design history artefacts.
Assessment move
Before Week 2, write a single paragraph comparing Fry and Jackson, with one quotation and one paraphrase, each cited in APA 7. Keep a running list in your journal of the critical reading questions and tick the ones you used for each later reading. Choose one everyday object at home and list the six contexts from the lecture beside it: production, labour, communication, consumption, reuse and waste, and economic systems.
That habit of placing an object in its contexts is the core move of the whole subject. Bring your journal to the first studio with three questions about the readings.
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