Beyond Western Narratives

The journal actively challenges Eurocentric perspectives by publishing research on design traditions from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and indigenous communities worldwide. This approach acknowledges that design history encompasses far more than the familiar Western canon.

Scholarly contributions have documented distinctive material cultures from regions such as West Africa's textile traditions, Japanese craft-design movements, Latin American modernism, and Aboriginal Australian visual systems. These studies demonstrate how local materials, techniques, spiritual beliefs, and social structures have produced rich design languages with their own internal logics and aesthetic principles.

Cross-Cultural Exchange

Articles frequently examine how design ideas travel across borders, adapting to local contexts while creating new hybrid forms. These studies reveal the complex networks of influence that have shaped design practices globally throughout history.

Research has explored phenomena such as the adaptation of European modernism in postcolonial nations, the influence of Japanese aesthetics on Western design movements, and the circulation of craft techniques along historical trade routes. Such scholarship reveals that design innovation often emerges at cultural intersections, challenging notions of cultural purity or unidirectional influence from centers to peripheries.

Decolonizing Design History

Recent scholarship published in the journal critically examines colonial legacies in design education and practice. This work highlights how power structures have privileged certain design narratives while marginalizing others.

Articles have analyzed how design museums categorize non-Western artifacts, interrogated the epistemological foundations of design education globally, and documented indigenous design knowledge systems that operate outside Western paradigms. This critical perspective helps reframe design history as a discipline that must acknowledge its own institutional biases and work toward more equitable representations of global creative practices. 

Multilingual Research

While published in English, the journal welcomes research drawing on primary sources in multiple languages, ensuring scholarly access to design histories documented in non-English archives and collections.

This linguistic inclusivity has enabled groundbreaking research on topics such as Arabic typographic history, Chinese design periodicals, Brazilian manifestos, and Russian constructivism, all based on original language materials. The journal provides translation support and encourages methodological discussions about working across language barriers, recognizing that key design concepts may have different semantic fields in different linguistic traditions.

Critical Research

DH fosters scholarly investigation that challenges conventional narratives and explores design history through diverse theoretical frameworks, encouraging new perspectives and methodologies. Our peer-reviewed articles apply rigorous analytical approaches from fields including anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and material culture studies to deepen understanding of design's complex historical dimensions.

Cultural Context

The journal examines design as both reflection and driver of cultural change, analyzing how objects, spaces, and visual communications embody and influence societal values. We explore the interconnections between design artifacts and their socio-political environments, considering issues of power, identity, consumption, and representation across diverse global contexts and marginalized communities.