Contemporary Design History

Abstract

This chapter considers the particular challenges presented by the task of compiling and communicating histories of the recent past. It explores the possibility that design history, as a set of approaches, perspectives, and techniques concerned with immediate and material human interactions with the environment, is well suited for this task. The chapter is organized in three sections. The first explores the temporality and scope of contemporary design history. The second discusses methods, perspectives, and challenges for undertaking contemporary design history; and the third suggests potential contributions that contemporary design history can make, as a mode of working within other related disciplines and practices and as public history-making. A research project into the history of graphic design in 1990s Japan provides a case study throughout the chapter.

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