Design as practice, science and research

Beat Schneider

pp. 207-218

in: Ralf Michel (ed), Design research now, Basel, Birkhäuser, 2007

Abstract

Design has become a fashionable term that is applied to almost everything. It triggers associations with trendy products, beautiful forms, aesthetic lifestyles, the comforts (and drugs) of civilisation etc. Design, at one time a luxury and the prerogative of the upper classes, has been an article of consumption for the general public since the 1980s. It is now the mass markets' favourite word.