Map of the Design Landscape Through Recent History
I’d like to feature the work of one of my graduate students. I gave an assignment in which each student was to design a map of the design landscape depicting major disciplines, organizations, educational institutions, firms, luminaries, and methods. They didn’t necessarily have to include all of this information, nor were they limited to it. Forrest Conroy incorporated everything just mentioned, and then added conferences, related companies, and example products. He mapped everything over time, showing relationships between them. The resulting chart is a beautiful piece of work.
Forrest used three major categories: communications in yellow, which is equivalent to Graphic Design, interactions + activities in blue, which includes Interaction Design, Information Architecture, and Service Design, and products in red, which is basically Industrial Design. You can watch these intertwine as digital products like computers and mobile phones incorporate hardware and software design.
Lines track the careers of prominent designers along the horizontal axis of time, while vertical lines make connections between people, organizations, and methods.
Insets on the right-hand side list all NASAD approved design programs.
