"Declaration by Design: An Invitation to the New Liberal Arts" (Richard Buchanan)
Design theorist Richard Buchanan's 1985 essay "Declaration by Design" argued that everything designers make, from objects to systems, is really an argument about how people should live.
An essay by design theorist Richard Buchanan (Carnegie Mellon, later Case Western Reserve), published in Design Issues vol. 2 no. 1 in 1985 under the full title Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design Practice. It argues that designed things are arguments about how people should live, persuading through technological reasoning, character and emotion rather than words, and it laid the ground for Buchanan's later four orders of design: symbols, things, actions and environments.
As Richard Buchanan articulated in "Declaration by Design: An Invitation to the New Liberal Arts," design outcomes can range from symbolic communication and material objects to activities, services, and complex systems or environments.
Related in Community
Entries this one is tied to through the book.
Books and references
- The Design of Everyday Things · discussed together in section 154
- The Story of Stuff · discussed together in section 154
Examples
- An Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore) · discussed together in section 154
- Silent Spring (Rachel Carson) · discussed together in section 154
- The Story of Stuff (Annie Leonard) · discussed together in section 154
- The Climate Book (Greta Thunberg, ed.) · discussed together in section 154
- The Lean Startup (Eric Ries) · discussed together in section 154
In the framework
- Outcomes Component
In the book
- Chapter 16, section 154 · Our creations (What?)
Mentioned in
Examples