First Issues, First Words: Vision in the Making

This study connects design history with design practice, and focuses on editorial introductions found within the first issues of a broad cross section of design periodicals launched around the world between 1902–2015. This body of literature includes a diverse range of scholarly / peer-reviewed journals, professional magazines, and designer-authored publications. All of these are somehow connected with visual communication design and related disciplines. Many design periodicals began publication to provide or facilitate thought leadership, criticism, research or scholarly inquiry within particular social, economic, and industrial contexts. Their introductory issues, and often the editorial mission statements contained within them, may be read as calls to action, or manifestos, among the various constituencies of the professional or academic design communities, or their clienteles, or among the broad array of vendors and manufacturers that the work of designers affects. As a means to critically examine these writings on what design is, does, and might be, this author prototyped a ‘new’ text, with lines extracted from these introductions. The resulting new text, Vision in the Making, makes visible a collection of design writings that contain informational as well as expressive content, and may not otherwise receive close attention. In this paper, this study’s context and method are followed by Vision in the Making in the form of a visual essay