newsletter
bi-monthly bulletin of the International Council of Design

January 2023

01

Current issues

How can design courses that take only a few weeks to complete be taken seriously? For interior designers with years of education and experience, the 'quickie course' framed as legitimate design training is shocking. It also points out the growing confusion between designing and 'decorating'. Underlining yet another fundamental problem in the design industry around issues of professionalism, this feature discusses the context around the influx of this type of ‘designer’, and the growing phenomenon of ‘performative design’.

Read the feature

02

On Design

Being a discipline of study and practice focused on the interaction between a person—a ‘user'—and the human-made environment, design considers aesthetic, functional, contextual, cultural and societal considerations.

In our On Design section, the Council briefly defines what exactly design is and why it's so important in today's world.

Read more

03

Anouncement of designer/studio for IDD Call for Interest

International Design Day 2023

Announcing the winner of this year's visual identity!

ICoD put out a global call for interest in the creation of the visual for International Design Day 2023: Peace. Love. Design! We now announce the winner is Martina Giustolisi, a graphic designer based in Sicily (Italy) and a graduate of the Visual Communication Design programme at the Academy of Fine Arts Catania. Giustolisi's work deals with visual identity and the role of the professional designer in relation to social and cultural contexts.

Stay tuned for more on how Peace. Love. Design! inspires how we think about designing in 2023!

Read more about this year's theme

04

New Member

New Member Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) School of Fashion Technology is an interdisciplinary fashion design and textile education institution in India. KIIT provides an intellectually stimulating, practice-based learning environment for students of design. ICoD is pleased to welcome KIIT to our membership network.

See the feature

05

Opinion

For Dezeen, writer and narrative designer Holly Nielsen writes about the metaverse, examining how possible it is for an online space to be a place that provides "community, freedom, self-expression, accessibility and socialisation", or whether tech companies void it of any such potential.

As a digital landscape that is still under construction, the metaverse holds the potential to be many different things. However, according to Nielsen, "ownership-obsessed metaverses envisioned by tech companies are depressing and uninspiring". This prompts designers involved in the building of such spaces to ask the question, are we doomed to repeat the same problems of our real-world spaces?

Read more

06

ICoD Events

The Council's latest campaign to make design visible asks designers to advocate for credit. In doing so, we hope to highlight the need and benefit of professional design in our world. We are asking design clients to credit their designers and for designers to do their part in convincing their clients that credit is fair, right and can be beneficial to them too. Together, let's make design visible.

Join the @theicod #campaignforcredit !

Read the manifesto here

07

Design education

Disabled design educator Josh A. Halstead states, “when it’s okay to erase human diversity, you don’t plan on diverse bodies being around, and so you don’t design for them.”

In this article from AIGA Eye On Design, chronically ill designer and writer, Kaiya Waerea reflects on the ways design and design education continues to maintain barriers to participation for disabled students and educators. By being barred from the classroom, Waerea writes, these students are further cut off from the particular knowledge produced through lived experience to the designed world.

Read more

08

Design future

From artificial intelligence to circular design, to global inflation and climate change, the design world has much to tackle in the upcoming year!

Marking the start of 2023, Dezeen spoke to 10 designers and industry experts to share what they think is set to influence design trends this year. Designers, including French industrial designer, Philippe Starck, and Nigerian interior designer and critical design thinker, Titi Ogufere, share their predictions.

Read the article

postings + announcements

ICoD Member events
Hiiibrand Awards 2023 Submissions: 13 October 2022 to 15 February 2023 Hiiibrand

The International Council of Design (ICoD) was founded as Icograda in 1963. The name changed in 2014 to reflect the Council's focus shift towards multidisciplinarity.

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Phone: +1 514 875 7545
Email: info@theicod.org
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