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Call for papers craft+design enquiry Issue 8 (2016)

‘Global Parallels: Production and Craft in 

Fashion and Industrial Design Industries’ 

NOW OPEN

© ellaspede                                            © Briz Vegas – Brisbane  

The craft + design enquiry  Editorial Board welcomes Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, Rafael Gomez and Kathleen Horton, from Queensland University of Technology, as the Guest Editors of c+de#8 with the theme of ‘Global Parallels: Production and Craft in Fashion and Industrial Design Industries’.
Contributors to c+de#8 are invited to submit Expressions of Interest for either the Themed Section or the Open Section by following the Steps to Submitting a Paper outlined below.
Expressions of Interest close on 30 April 2015. For contributors invited to submit papers, the deadline for full papers is 30 June 2015. c+de#8 will be published in mid-2016.

Open Section — call for papers
The Guest Editors and the c+de Editorial Board invite submissions to the Open Section exploring any aspect of contemporary craft and design. Expressions of Interest for the Open Section are assessed by the c+de Editorial Board. All invited submissions to the Open Section are peer reviewed and selected for publication in line with c+de procedures for the Themed Section.
Contributors to the Open Section of c+de#8 should follow the Steps to Submitting a Paper outlined below. Expressions of Interest close on 30 April 2015. For contributors invited to submit papers, the deadline for full papers is 30 June 2015.

Themed Section — call for papers: 
‘Global Parallels: Production and Craft in 
Fashion and Industrial Design Industries’

Guest Edited by Tiziana Ferrero-Regis , Rafael Gomez and Kathleen Horton of Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. They write: 

This special issue of c+de aims to explore questions of design and craft across fashion and industrial design industries in the current global context. In light of de-localisation of manufacturing practices and increasingly complex supply chains, the alternating place and meaning of ‘skills and craft’ in the context of these vast global industries, and the transformational role and status of the designer in a market that is equally flooded with fast fashion and disposable ‘on trend’ lifestyle products, we seek to examine how the two worlds of fashion and industrial design intersect in terms of production, craft and design.

The Wasteland collection by Maison Briz Vegas, Paris 2011,
 top and shorts made from recycled T-shirt fabric,
with original hand-block prints Photo: Carla van Lunn

The geographical distribution of manufacturing in the fashion industry and in industrial design has changed radically in the past 25 years, with much of the production and jobs shifting to low-income countries. The globalisation of production has generated long supply chains of many mediators that are employed neither to solve problems nor invent new styles. In the fashion industry, mediators ‘translate’ pre-existing trends into products at a pre-identified price point and for a specific market. In this respect the term fashion designer is something of an anachronism. Typically, in both fashion and industrial design, the notion of design is bound to the creative celebrity designer (think Karl Lagerfeld or Steve Jobs) who is synonymous with brand or corporate identity. In both industries, however, teams of ‘invisible’ design mediators, whose roles and responsibilities are defined largely through market and industrial imperatives, are scattered across the supply chain and the globe. 
 

Ellaspede Design Studios 2012, design process, sketching and conceptualisation
Photo: Tammy Law Photography, courtesy of Ellaspede

Design mediator, or product developer, is a rather less romantic term than designer, but one that has far more industry cachet. Industrial changes in both fashion and industrial design have shaped and re-oriented conceptual definitions of ‘design’, and introduced the product developer. Thus we argue that the currency of this term is vital in understanding not only the nature of contemporary fashion and industrial design practice, but also the status, profession and evolution of ‘design’ as it is applied across both fields.
We would also like to explore the rise of independent design practices that have purposefully engaged with a reinvigorated idea of craft and local production in response to globalised design production. In these models, design and manufacture is often reconnected via an engagement with craft practices. Therefore, while design and craft have often been posed as oppositional forces (one representing industrialisation, planning and management, and the other standing for the handmade, the material and the authentic), both the fields of fashion and industrial design are witnessing innovative new models of practice linking artisanal values with post-industrial design processes, thus instigating the rise of a new-age designer, one which indeed embraces a more holistic approach


This issue of c+de invites contributions in the following areas:

•  re-orientation of the definition of ‘design’ in fashion and industrial design

•  the emergence of the ‘product developer’ and ambiguities between design and product development

•  the spectrum of possibilities afforded by craft production

•  the creative process and diffusion of creativity along the supply chain

•  design and innovation in local manufacturing

•  design and/or product development in the future 

Issue #8 Guest Editors:
Dr Tiziana Ferrero-Regis is senior lecturer in fashion history and theory, School of Design, QUT. She has a professional background in advertising and fashion and has published in several journals on a range of topics that include memory and history in cultural representations (Recent Italian Cinema: Spaces, Contexts, Experiences 2009), the politics of fashion, the role of the designer, and fashion and film. From her visits to communities of women workers in the textile and clothing industry in India in the mid-
1980s, she has developed a research focus on the division of international labour and sustainability. 

Dr Rafael Gomez is an industrial designer and design researcher. He is a lecturer in industrial design, School of Design at QUT, and has practiced for over a decade in industrial design, graphic design, branding, high-end visualisation and projection graphics for small, medium and large enterprises. As a founding member of the Design and Emotion Australia Chapter, his research focus is the converging of design, emotions and experiences with health and medical devices in everyday life. He has written extensively on design and emotional experience with portable interactive devices and automotive design and continues to forge national and international collaborations with a view to establish research strength in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Kath Horton is head of fashion in the School of Design at QUT. Her research and teaching focuses on the aesthetics and politics of fashion across both historical and contemporary contexts. In 2010 Kath founded the stitchery collective, a platform for collaborative fashion design projects. Through both her theoretical and practice-based projects Kath explores the possibilities for alternative forms of engagement with fashion in the 21st century.

Steps to submitting a paper for c+de#8
Step 1
Themed Section: Expressions of Interest (one A4 page) are invited to be submitted before 30 April 2015 to jenny.deves@anu.edu.au. The Guest Editors will review abstracts and respond promptly to contributors. 


Open Section: Expressions of Interest (one A4 page) are invited to be submitted before 30 April 2015 to jenny.deves@anu.edu.au. The Editorial Board will review abstracts and respond promptly to contributors. 

Step 2
If invited to submit a paper, contributors to both the Themed Section and the Open Section, are required to complete and submit their final papers by 30 June 2015 to jenny.deves@anu.edu.au. Submitted papers must meet the style requirements outlined in the c+de Author Guidelines and be accompanied by a c+de#8 Lodgement Registration Form (copies available from jenny.deves@anu.edu.au or the c+de blog http://craftdesignenquiry.blogspot.com.au/)