Design Reviewed #1
The team behind Disegno is proud to announce Design Reviewed, a new biannual publication devoted to experiential writing around design and its users – pre-order your copy here.
Each issue of Design Reviewed contains 10 essays in which writers get hands-on with design and its various manifestations in the world. The texts are not qualitative assessments of their subjects, but rather personal reflections on design and the contexts in which it operates.
The issue is structured around 10 different forms of design output: technology, ecology, media, object, body, system, interface, policy, space and phenomena. While these categories are not exhaustive, they aim to provide a structuring principle for a discipline that is increasingly diffuse and varied.
The publication features a new design from Disegno’s creative directors, Studio AKFB and designer Jonas Hirschmann. In contrast to Disegno’s journal format, Design Reviewed is a smaller, more book-like publication, which takes its cue from publications such as field guides, jotters and technical manuals. It is a publication designed to be portable and handy, with a cream dust jacket to help protect it during journeys.
Moving forward, Design Reviewed will be published each summer and winter, with Disegno released in spring and autumn. While Disegno will be reserved for long-form reporting, in-depth interviews, and emerging project stories, Design Reviewed is a space for reflection on design as it is experienced by its users.
The first issue includes essays by Amelia Abraham, Khorshed Deboo, Elizabeth Glickfeld, Helen Gonzalez Brown, Vic Parsons, Matthew Turner, Sanjana Varghese and Lily Wakeley, as well as Disegno’s India Block and Oli Stratford.
Design Reviewed #1 contains:
1. Technology: Connection is Medicine
Helen Gonzalez Brown lives with the Apple Watch Ultra, testing its ambitions to help users build healthier lifestyles.
2. Ecology: Borderline Production
Lily Wakeley samples sotol, a desert spirit whose commercial production illuminates the history of Mexico’s borderlands.
3. Media: Let’s Unpack That
India Block plays Unpacking and gets cosy with a video game genre offering more expansive digital spaces.
4. Object: Furnitureheads
Elizabeth Glickfeld gets the drop on the Fauteuil Kangarou, a mid-century chair dragged into the internet economy.
5. Body: Relief
Vic Parsons remembers their years spent chest binding and examines the role of garments that affirm gender identity.
6. System: Vacation, All I Never Wanted
Oli Stratford holidays at the Desa Potato Head, sifting through the potential of Bali’s tourist waste.
7. Interface: Enter the Washing Machine
Sanjana Varghese swipes through TikTok to get under the hood of social media’s reigning interface design.
8. Policy: Reading Between the Signs
Khorshed Deboo tours the graphic landscape of Mumbai, where a new law has triggered city-wide language changes.
9. Space: A Home is not Always a House
Matthew Turner rides London’s Elizabeth line, settling into the pleasures of a mobile living room.
10. Phenomena: Poppers on Main
Amelia Abraham huffs Excalibur XO to get to grips with design mainstreaming
queer culture and aesthetics.
Design Reviewed #1 is released on 5 December 2022. Is it available to order from our online shop now.