Symposium The Design of History and the History of Design


London College of Communication
15 September, 2025



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SpeakerS and Abstracts:

Huda Almazroua
Alberto Atalla Filho
Russ Bestley
Kevin Biderman
Silvia Bombardini
David Cross
Dora Souza Dias
Sam Gathercole
Ian Horton and Ian Hague
Jennifer Hankin
Zarna Hart
John-Patrick Hartnett
Fenella Hitchcock
Abbie Vickress and Sakis Kyratzis
Christopher Lacy
Timothy Miller
Danah Nassief
Jesse O’Neill
Nina O’Reilly
Patrick O’Shea
David Preston
Cheryl Roberts
Rebecca Ross
Antoin Sharkey
Andrew Slatter
Kate Trant
Vanessa Vanden Berghe
Judy Willcocks
Christin Yu



A symposium for UAL’s Design History research community


The Design of History and the History of Design is a one-day symposium that maps research into, through or at the boundaries of design history at UAL. While design history may underpin our teaching across different disciplines, research in design history across UAL is somewhat hidden. This symposium aims to share and make visible the work of researchers (staff and students) at all career stages across all UAL colleges.

Exploring the intersections of historical narrative and design practice, it examines how history is constructed, represented, and mediated through design, and how the discipline of design itself is shaped by its evolving historiography.

The symposium will serve as the starting point for a Design History Network at UAL, bringing together researchers from across the university. It also lays the foundation for a welcoming research community in design history, with potential for ongoing events, collaboration, publications, and curriculum development.

If you have any questions or would like to be involved in future activities, please get in touch with the convenors:

Rujana Rebernjak
r.rebernjak@lcc.arts.ac.ukTai Cossich
t.cossich@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Please also sign up for the UAL Design Histories Newsletter




    John-Patrick Hartnett
    What’s a (typographic) world? Traditional Irish music, modernity and Irish type


    The edited volume ‘Ireland, Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity, 1922-1992’ (King and Sisson, 2011) maps the development of design and visual culture in Ireland from the tumultuous beginnings of the Irish Free State until wider economic prosperity arrived via the ‘Celtic Tiger’ in the 1990s. The collected texts demonstrate how Ireland’s troubled political and economic history ensured that its emergent design industry developed along different lines to those that flourished in the twentieth century in continental Europe and the US. In the years since the book’s publication, the ‘decolonial turn’ in design studies (Ansari, 2024) has seen the emergence of substantial interest in theoretical frameworks that radically challenge the established narratives upon which design discourse in the Global North has historically been based (Abdulla et al, 2019; Fry and Nocek, 2021; Maries and Paim, 2021). This work has disturbed the untroubled conception of modernity that sits at the heart of much Western design scholarship and calls for a reconsideration of many of its foundational theories.  

    A key presence within the ‘decolonial turn’ is the anthropologist Arturo Escobar, who, prior to engaging with design studies, was a leading figure within post-development theory – a school of thought that challenges the application of Western economic models as the basis for prosperity in ‘underdeveloped’ nations. This paper imagines what a contribution to ‘Ireland, Design and Visual Culture’ might look like in light of the  influence of Escobar’s work on the field of contemporary design studies. Drawing on ideas from ‘Encountering Development’ (2012), ‘Territories of Difference’ (2008), and ‘Designs for the Pluriverse’ (2016), the study explores the use of Irish type in the design of traditional Irish music LPs in the 1950s and 1960s, with a focus on Irish language releases on the Gael-Linn and Claddagh labels. It asks to what extent a ‘world’ – its language, traditions and culture – might be expressed through type and typography amidst the context of social and economic change. 

    Indicative bibliography

    • Abdulla, D. et al (2019) ‘A Manifesto for Decolonising Design’, Journal of Futures Studies, 23(3), pp. 129–132. Available at: https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.201903_23(3).0012 (Accessed: May 20 2024).

    • Ansari, A. (2024) ‘Editorial: Decolonization & Knowledge in Design’. Diseña, 25, pp. 1-6.    

    • Bhambra, G.K. (2023) Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination, 2nd edn. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

    • Escobar, A. (2008) Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham/London: Duke University Press.

    • Escobar, A. (2012) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

    • Escobar, A. (2018) Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy and the Making of Worlds. Durham/London: Duke University Press.

    • Fry, T. and Nocek, A. (eds.) (2021) Design in Crisis: New Worlds, Philosophies and Practices. Routledge: London.

    • King, L. and Sisson, E. (2011) Ireland, Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity, 1922-1992. Cork: Cork University Press 

    • Kinross, R. (2008) Modern Typography: An Essay in Critical History, 2nd edn. London: Hyphen Press.

    • Mareis, C. and Paim, N. (2021) (eds.) Design Struggles: Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives. Amsterdam: Valiz. 

    • McCormack, N., and Swan, C. (2019) Myth, Meaning, and Modernity: Printed Record Sleeves and Visual Representation of Irish Music, 1958–86. Éire-Ireland, 54 (1/2), pp. 46-81. 

    • McGuinne, D. (2010) Irish Type Design: A History of Printing Types in the Irish Character, 2nd edn. Dublin: National Print Museum. 

    • Ó Canainn, T. (1978) Traditional Music in Ireland. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 



    — John-Patrick Hartnett


    John-Patrick Hartnett is an educator, researcher and designer. He is Senior Lecturer in Contextual and Theoretical Studies at London College of Communication (University of the Arts London) and Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at University of Brighton. He contributes regularly to Eye Magazine (‘the international review of graphic design’), and has been published by Bloomsbury, AIGA Eye on Design, and Artefact: The Journal of the Irish Association of Art Historians. He has presented research internationally at conferences such as Typo Day (India) and CAA (USA). button 2