Design for the real world

Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World (1971) is a foundational text arguing that design is inherently a political act and that designers carry responsibility for the social and environmental consequences of what they create. Papanek criticized much of the design of his time as inconvenient, frivolous, and often unsafe, produced for luxury markets and planned obsolescence rather than genuine human need. He called instead for socially and ecologically responsible design, including design that serves underserved communities and the developing world. The book became one of the most widely read design texts of the twentieth century, translated into more than twenty languages, and it remains a reference point for socially and environmentally engaged design. Credits: Papanek, V. (2007). Design for the real world. En Proceedings of the 2006 workshop on New security paradigms (pp. 109–116). http://doi.org/10.1145/1278940.1278958