An Introduction to Design and Culture provides a comprehensive guide to the changing relationships between design and culture from 1900 to the present day with an emphasis on five main themes:

Design and consumption

Design and technology

The design profession

Design theory

Design and identities.

This fifth edition extends the traditional definition of design to embrace its more recent manifestations, which include service design, user-interface design, co-design, and sustainable design. It also discusses the relationship between design and the new media and the effect of globalisation and transnationalism on design. Most importantly, it looks at its contents through a new lens which acknowledges the post-industrial, post-colonial, post-modern, (and, arguably, post-design) climate of the twenty-first century and the challenges that it poses.

Taking a broadly chronological approach, Professor Sparke employs historical methods to show how these themes developed through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century and played a role within modernism, post-modernism and beyond. Over a hundred illustrations are used throughout to demonstrate the breadth of design, and examples - among them design in Modern China, the work of Apple Computers Ltd., and design thinking - are used to elaborate key ideas. The new edition remains essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of design studies, cultural studies and visual arts.