Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

`Julier provides an important contemporary account of how design disciplines act and interact in the world. Furthermore, this exercise in cultural coordination is infused with academic import: he references classic thinkers in cultural and social studies such as Marx, Bourdieu, Baudrillard, Fiske, Hebdige, Williamson... to name only a few, and these `names′ aren′t merely mentioned; importantly, his critical analyses of these thinkers with respect to pertinent issues within contemporary design, are timely and interesting.... an important resource for the student of design... perfection as a cultural studies text′ - European Journal of Cultural Studies

Aimed at students of design studies, design history, cultural studies and sociology, The Culture of Design , offers a unique overview of design practice in contemporary culture and society. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, Julier nevertheless foregrounds the everyday business and professional context in which designers work.

The Culture of Design : establishes `design culture′ as a distinct discipline; investigates the interactions of design producers and consumers; includes a series of illustrative case studies; and opens up design and design practice for critical interrogation.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Part 1 Design Production
• Design Consultancy Reaches 'Critical Mass'
• Setting the Scene with Some Statistics
• The Establishment of Design Consultancy
• The 1980s Design Consultancy Boom
• 'Neo-Fordist' Design Consultancy
• 'Post-Fordist' Design Consultancy
• The 1990s
• Towards a Brand-Ethos
• Concurrent Design
• Part 2 Designers and Design Discourse
• Definitions of Design
• The Professionalization Debate
• Professionalization and Differentiation
• Historicity and Modernism in Design Discourse
• Second Modernity versus Design Management
• Part 3 The Consumption of Design
• The Culture of Consumption
• Design and Consumer Culture
• Passive or Sovereign Consumers?
• De-Alienation and Designing
• The Aesthetic Illusion
• Systems of Provision
• Circuits of Culture
• Designers and the Circuit of Culture
• Writing about Things
• Part 4 High Design
• Anomalous Objects
• High Design
• 'Design Classics'
• Mediating Production
• Consuming Postmodern High Design
• Veblen and Bourdieu
• Historicity
• Modern Designers/Modern Consumers
• Designers, Risk and Reflexivity
• Part 5 Consumer Goods
• Images
• Surfaces
• Doing the Dyson
• Product Semantics
• Mood Boards
• Lifestyles and Design Ethnography
• Back to the Workshop
• Product Semantics and Flexible Manufacture
• Designing Global Products
• Product Designers and Their Clients
• Dyson Stories
• Re-Doing the Dyson
• Part 6 Branded Places
• Evaluating Place
• Beyond Architectural Articism
• The Barcelona Paradigm
• Cultural Economies and Regeneration
• Responses to Globalization I
• Place-Making of City Regions through Design
• Responses to Globalization II
• The Branding of City-Regions and Nations
• Problematizing the Branding of Place
• Part 7 Branded Leisure
• From 'Fordist' to Disorganized Leisure
• The Disney Paradigm
• Post-Tourists
• Naked and Nowhere at Center Parcs
• Televisuality and Designing Leisure Experiences
• Dedifferentiation/Distinction
• Part 8 On-Screen Interactivity
• Computers and Graphic Design
• Technological Development and Consumer Growth
• Professional Practices
• Critical Reflection
• Authorship
• Readership
• Consuming Interactivity
• Cybernetic Loss
• Liberation and Regulation
• The Bigger Picture
• Bytes and Brands
• Part 9 Communications and Management
• Internal Brand Building
• The End of Advertising
• Brands and Communications Consultancy
• Employees as Consumers