Do It Yourself: Democracy and Design

The theme of this special issue arose from a perceived need to generate a discourse around the interface between ‘design’ taken as a function of the activity of ‘professional’ designers and being part of an established cycle of the design, production and consumption of goods; and ‘Do It Yourself’ taken as its antithesis—a more democratic design process of self-driven, self-directed amateur design and production activity carried out more closely to the end user of the goods created. Historically, productive and creative activities of this kind have allowed consumers to engage actively with design and the design process at a number of levels, and to express a more individual aesthetic unbounded by the strictures of mass-production and passive consumption. The agencies that have mediated this interface between design and DIY (the advice leaflets, manuals and guide books, exposition and retail catalogues, newspaper reports and magazines and later, radio and television programmes)...