Making Design Research Visible

VJAdminAccess100 May 20, 2025May 27, 2025

Issue 59.1

Editorial — In With the New!

A Shifting Practice Paradigm Meets a Persistent Curriculum Paradigm

Digital Type Challenges

Towards Interdisiplinary: Juggling Similarities and Differences

Nineteen Questions to Evaluate Typographic Practice: Chaff and Wheat

Visible Language Evolves

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Making Design Research Visible

Nigel Cross

School of Engineering and Innovation, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK (nigel.cross[at]open.ac.uk)

Abstract: Design research now has an established history extending over more than 60 years. The current robust state of the field indicates that there has been real development and consolidation, including the establishment of academic journals. Most significantly, design is now recognized as an academic discipline. Disciplines need good journals in order to flourish — research has to be made visible.

Keywords: design discipline; design research

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Author

Nigel Cross is Emeritus Professor of Design Studies, The Open University, UK. He has considerable experience as a design teacher, and an international reputation as a design researcher through books such as Analysing Design Activity, Designerly Ways of Knowing, and Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work. He was a founding editor of the journal Design Studies in 1979 and its editor-in-chief from 1984 to 2017.

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