ABSTRACT
In 1971 a publication that would transform the ambitions of a generation of designers was published under the title Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change . The fi rst in a series of polemical design books whose publication spanned two decades, its author, Victor Papanek, adopted a populist rhetoric urging designers to look beyond commercial product styling towards a social imperative. As designer-cum-design theorist, Papanek formulated a transdisciplinary vision of socially responsible design in which designers, anthropologists, psychologists, fi lmmakers, biologists, engineers, and users united to form a socially inclusive practice geared to the problems of the “real world.” The brand of design activism Papanek and his followers promoted in the 1970s laid the foundations for a fi eld we now recognize as a branch of design studies. Pre-empting the twenty-fi rst-century shift towards design as a dispersed phenomenon, Design for the Real World drew upon a range of infl uences, condensing within its pages an ersatz manifesto for an era facing the fi rst crises of postindustrial development. In the preface to his book Papanek asserted prophetically, “it is time that industrial design, as we have come to know it, should cease to exist” (ibid.: xxii).
