About The Radical Designist in 2006
“The ‘Radical’ Designist”, a Design Culture Journal (ThRAD), is an on-line referred journal with a double-blinded reviewing system that is devoted to the publication of Design and Material Culture papers.
ThRAD is associated to the research line, “Theory and History of Material Culture”, within UNIDCOM/IADE´s (Unidade de Investigação em Design e Comunicação do Instituto de Artes Visuais Design e Marketing) department, which is funded by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia).
ThRAD will be a journal about Culture, in general, with a Design motto. ThRAD welcomes papers that enhance sharp observations on Literature, Film, Dance, Theatre, Sculpture, Architecture, etc., with short lists of bibliographic references. In other words, we prefer deep plunges in texts or objects rather than extensive literature reviews.
We hope to find Design in all places belonging to the cultural production of, what local editors consider to be, the Golden-age of Designism (from the 1950’s to the early 1990’s). This period is also characterized by its extreme expression of a tradition (initiated by the invention and institution of the word ‘Disegno’, originator of the first modern academies) that existed before the Digital Empire and the World Wide Web. It, therefore, corresponds to the last days of the contemporary era, just before the hyper-contemporary age.
Time rapidly galloped away from the ‘happy days’ of pre-Post-History, so we suggest that one undertakes an archaeological attitude when writing a paper, in order to prevent ‘mythographies’, regarding that period, from being installed.
Nevertheless, contributions, not limited to that time-frame, are welcome.
We also encourage contributions about the Golden-age of production of Portuguese-speaking countries.
Languages of submission: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French.
The annual paper publication of selected works, "The Reader´s Designist Magazine" (ThReAD) will be bilingual. ThRAD´s new issues will be available on-line in December, February, April and July. The deadline for submissions regarding issue THREE is: 5th of January, 2007.
Important Note: “The Radical Designist” has nothing to do, whatsoever, with biological “designism”. We do not speculate about intelligent design and its use in the origin of life.
For the 1st two launching years, ThRAD will also be part of a research project, funded by FCT, Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, about Drawing and the Portuguese Visual Culture – from the 1950's to the 1990's.
