Recent decades have seen an astonishing rise of professional design throughout the industrialised world. And yet, the full power of design to transform institutions and improve everyday lives is, still, barely understood. Meanwhile, a set of well-known challenges (climate change, social upheaval, economic crises etc.) gather pace.
This talk glances back to trace the historical emergence of two types of designer - one is embedded into mainstream commercial arrangements; the other plunders ideas widely to re-think situations. Can the zombies and the pirates be reconciled? Might this be within a steadily emergent form of design culture? Through a set of global examples Professor Julier has researched, he looks forward to embryonic design practices that signal new arrangements and ways of thinking and acting.