Tag Archives: design studies

There are a number of firms that have established consultancies in the design thinking and strategic design space. All the major companies like Frog, Smart, Continuum and IDEO very clearly offer strategic advice but lots of other more established firms are reasserting the importance of a craft based version of design. I think that’s interesting to note and I would say that this is part of the same kind of backlash that you’re seeing against science in relation to global warming. It’s a version of the anti-modernisation that Ulrich Beck talks about in relation to risk society. The only way to navigate risk is through participation, and when you start moving into participation, your old modernist institutions come under threat; and sometimes they react, as Ulrich Beck, says “barbarically”. I think what you’re seeing now is a kind of barbarism and an attempt to get back to a design fundamentalism in reaction to something that is much less able to be controlled by experts.