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Event Details
We are pleased to announce the new call for papers for issue 29 (December 2025) of PAD. Pages on Arts and Design:
Designing and Making: Evolving Roles, Methods, and Responsibilities
Guest Editors: James Postell (Politecnico di Milano), Grant Baker and Tom Hurford (Nottingham Trent University)
Humans make. From the earliest shaped stone tools to today’s advanced biomedical materials, the act of making has consistently served to improve life. This enduring timeline reveals a deeply rooted human impulse to create and innovate through material means. Over time, the identity and value of the maker – and their relationship with design – have shifted, influenced by cultural, economic, and societal perceptions. Crafts once celebrated as central to innovation now face new challenges, including aging workforces and, in some cases, the loss of traditional knowledge altogether.
PAD 29 explores how the relationship between designing and making continues to evolve. The social, cultural, environmental, and material dimensions of making are deeply embedded within design education, industry, and professional practice. The narrative of industry has long influenced this connection, from historical movements championing handcrafted production to contemporary examples of high-tech consumer design. Today, this relationship is increasingly situated within broader discussions of sustainability, ethics, and responsibility. Rather than simply asking whether something can be made, critical questions now include whether it should be made at all.
Design, by its nature, embraces contradictions – between function and expression, permanence and disposability, innovation and tradition. These tensions offer fertile ground for rethinking design methodologies and exploring the unique contributions of practice-based approaches.
This call invites contributions that examine the role of physical making within design processes across education and industry. Submissions may include case studies, reflections on contemporary practices, and analyses of emerging methodologies. Collectively, the issue will take the pulse of making and materiality in our increasingly digital and interconnected world.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Historic and contemporary relationships between education, design and production
- Reflections on the value, cultural meaning, and ethics of making and materiality in design
- Evolving attitudes to production, consumption, waste and Life Cycle Cost
- Making methodologies of the past, present and future
Abstract submission by email to editors@padjournal.net
Timing
Launch of the Call: June 2025
Abstract submission: July 30, 2025
Full Paper: September 30, 2025
Publication: by the end of December 2025
Extended call and additional information here: https://www.padjournal.net/new/designing-and-making/
