World History of Design

The article for Week 1 entitled "A World History of Design and the History of the World" by Victor Margolin provides a look into an institutional enterprise called "world history" and the issues surrounding the question of what constitutes world history and from whose point of view do we all agree on. The author introduces us to the term 'social history' and the background to the term.  Margolin then goes on to address the history of history and the way in which various types of histories have been recorded, and
looks at previous publications on world history and how western-centric these have all been.  An example is how John Hesketts 1980 book 'Industrial Design' focuses on design for the mass production and is limited only to those places where it was part of the industrial economic system.
The article then focuses specifically on design history and Margolin uses this western central interpretation on design history to argue the place of the designer in the economic development of western nations and how the designers role became even more important as a result of the Industrial Revolution. 

This article is a look at the many issues involved in recording a history of design and the many facets such as social, racial and national that need to be observed when compiling such a record, the author concludes that the compilation of such list should be organised in terms of economic, social and national factors rather than style, as the thread of style is weaved as a result of these factors.

This article was a really interesting look into the concept of history and how this record can be tainted by many issues.  However I feel the issue of trade was not sufficiently addressed as I know that this plays an integral role in economics and through trade, markets have been exposed to new products, sometimes cheaper, sometimes better that the products that the market had formally and this has provided healthy competition for designers to lift their game and produce a better product.

Margolin although did briefly mention the Great Exhibition and the role this played in exposing new products and ideas to new markets and designers he underplayed I believe the role trade has played in this.  Aside from this point this was a fine article to begin this unit with as it provided an important narrative to learning about design history.