Design Studies

The first American academic journal to examine design history, theory, and criticism, Design Issues provokes inquiry into the cultural and intellectual issues surrounding design. Regular features include theoretical and critical articles by professional and scholarly contributors, extensive book and exhibition reviews, and visual sequences. Special guest-edited issues concentrate on particular themes, such as design history, human-computer interface, service design, organization design, design for development, and product design methodology.

In publication since 1988, the research-focused mouthpiece of the Design History Society (DHS), the Journal of Design History (JDH) embraces the history of a range of design-related subjects, from furniture to product design, graphic design, craft, fashion, textiles, architectural interiors and exhibitions. Its orientation and reach are global. The Journal addresses the history of design from a humanities perspective primarily, but it also borrows methods from related fields including the social sciences, material culture studies and cultural studies.

Focusing on the decorative arts, design history, and material culture, West 86th provides a forum for new research into all aspects of the content, meaning, and significance of material objects in history. West 86th publishes scholarly articles; review articles; primary source translations; critical book, catalogue, and exhibition reviews; research inquiries; letters to the editor; and supplementary digital material integral to articles.

Design for Health is an international refereed journal covering all aspects of design in the context of health and wellbeing. The Journal is published three times a year and provides a global forum for researchers, educators, practitioners and policy makers who work at the intersections of design, health, science, creative practice, wellbeing and related fields.

The International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing (IJIDeM) presents interdisciplinary research, technical issues, and original industrial implementations. It examines the development, handling, and design of highly realistic, multi-sensorial virtual prototypes for improving decision-making in product design and manufacturing. Readers discover cutting-edge research in the fields of mechatronics, design and manufacturing sciences, numerical and mechanical engineering, and virtual reality.

Design Management Review explores how great design provides long-term competitive advantage in a changing world. Every issue connects you with the latest thinking on design strategy, methods, and leadership, supported by case studies and research. Design Management Review is devoted to articles and case studies exploring how design—in products, communication, and environments—is an essential resource, a component of every organization that can be effectively managed to make important contributions to the bottom line and to long-term success.

Journal of Material Culture explores the relationship between artefacts and social relations. It draws on a range of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, design studies, history, human geography and museology.

The topics covered by Material Culture include all aspects of the study of material items from any world regional focus.These include: the role of products and commodities in the global economy, the cultural patterns that explain distribution and diffusion; exploration of cultural patterns in performing and visual arts; understanding tradition and innovation among individuals and the societies creating them; the meaning and importance of past and contemporary objects to their makers and users; attempts at restoring and maintaining folk and popular culture landscape elements; and the importance of understanding the relationships of material culture in the contemporary landscape.

Focusing on the decorative arts, design history, and material culture, West 86th provides a forum for new research into all aspects of the content, meaning, and significance of material objects in history. West 86th publishes scholarly articles; review articles; primary source translations; critical book, catalogue, and exhibition reviews; research inquiries; letters to the editor; and supplementary digital material integral to articles.

Winterthur Portfolio fosters knowledge of the North American past by publishing articles on material culture and the historical contexts within which artifacts developed. The journal presents interdisciplinary scholarship that critically engages art history, history, geography, ethnology, archaeology, anthropology, craft, design, and literature. It publishes articles that are analytical and synthetic rather than descriptive, and it encourages submissions by scholars underrepresented in material culture studies.

Offered jointly by Parsons School of Design and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, this MA program brings an object-focused, practice-based approach to the study of curatorial practice, design and decorative arts dating from the Renaissance through industrialization to the present. Housed for more than 30 years at Cooper Hewitt—the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to historical and contemporary design—the program offers students the opportunity to work directly with the museum’s collections, curators, conservators, and educators. Program graduates go on to careers as historians, curators, and scholars in museums, universities, historic houses, auction houses, and galleries. Objective, the journal published by the program, presents topical essays, short papers, reviews, and interviews written by current students and alumni of the program and is published either in print or digitally every two years.

Plot(s) Journal of Design Studies is an annual academic publication edited by graduate students at Parsons School of Design, The New School in New York. The international peer-reviewed journal explores the multiplicity of definitions within design and draws from a broader field of academic disciplines including visual and material culture, anthropology, sociology, and beyond.

Criticism provides a forum for current scholarship on literature, media, music, and visual culture. A place for rigorous theoretical and critical debate as well as formal and methodological self-reflexivity and experimentation, Criticism aims to present contemporary thought at its most vital.

Journal of Visual Culture is an international refereed journal that welcomes compelling, critically engaged contributions that explore and expand trans-disciplinary global visual cultures.

Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture is a quarterly peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing the most current international research on the visual culture of Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, as well as that created in diaspora. A defining focus of the journal is its concentration of current scholarship on both Latin American and Latinx visual culture in a single publication. The journal aims to approach ancient, colonial, modern and contemporary Latin American and Latinx visual culture from a range of interdisciplinary methodologies and perspectives.

The purpose of the journal is to encourage and promote an understanding of how visual culture constructs gender in context with representations of race, age, sexuality, social units, and social class.

Open access design journal published by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Design (PolyU Design). Focuses on three realms: Design Social (設計社會學): collaborative design with communities to improve their lives through participatory, theoretical and critical approaches;
Design Economies (設計經濟學): collaborative design that enhances the role of design in innovation and value creation in the private sector; and Design Making (設計製造學): design investigations with communities and practices of making, and the global “maker movement,” as expressed through technological, organizational as well as sociological facets. Indexed by Google Scholar.

The International Journal of Design is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to publishing research papers in all fields of design, including industrial design, visual communication design, interface design, animation and game design, architectural design, urban design, and other design related fields. It aims to provide an international forum for the exchange of ideas and findings from researchers across different cultures and encourages research on the impact of cultural factors on design theory and practice. It also seeks to promote the transfer of knowledge between professionals in academia and industry by emphasizing research in which results are of interest or applicable to design practices.