Editorial This issue of Design Studies celebrates the new decade. Depending on how one reckons the place of the zero-th year, we are either a little late of a little early with the celebration! We include in this issue several special articles that are focussed towards the coming decade of the nineteen-nineties - will it be 'the decade of design', as suggested by one of our contributors?

Certainly, the last decade has seen substantial growth in public awareness of design, in personal, educational, business and national terms. There has also been a welcome growth in academic interest in design, signall- ing the growing maturity of design as a discipline.

One particular indicator of the growth of academic interest has been the appearance of several new academic journals in the field of design over the last decade. Design Studies itself first appeared in 1979, to try to fill the huge gap that we in the Design Research Society perceived to exist in academic coverage of our field - and we have been proved correct.

On both sides of the Atlantic, new English language design research journals have appeared. In the USA, the journal Design Issues began publication in 1984, and in 1989 the journal of Research in Engineering Design began publication. Both of these share many interests with Design Studies. In the UK, we have seen the appearance of the journals of Art and Design Education (1982), Design History (1984) and Engineering Design (1990). Each of these has identified, in its rifle, its own particular area of interest, but also helps to develop our common interest in design.

In a sense, of course, these new journals are competi- tors with Design Studies, but we can only welcome them as fellow participants in the development of our subject, joining with us and with the few other journals, such as Design Methods and Theory (USA) and Planning and Design (UK), that also existed at the start of the 'eighties. We now have a reasonable field for publication and academic discourse, and we can only hope that the coming decade will see scholars and rearchers taking advantage of this field.

For our own 'celebration' of the new decade, we beging this issues with personal statements invited from two of the most respected design scholars - L. Bruce Archer and John Chris Jones. They have both been influential in the world of design for the last three

decades or more. In the case of Chris Jones, however, many people have wondered over the last decade whether he had not really quit the world of design for its supposed antithesis, the world of chance. Some of his chance- composed writings have appeared in Design Studies and have left many readers baffled. I would ask those people to try again, and to pay attention especially to Jones' second contribution in this issue - his essay 'Depending on everyone'. Some of the characters in this essay may be familiar from previous compositions, but the cautious character of Dr Bellamy will perhaps speak most clearly to anyone who wants to know what it all means for design. Interestingly, many of the themes raised by Jones in his essay also appear again in most of the other papers in this issue.

Richard Buchanan's paper is reprinted from one of our new(ish) compatriot journals, Desi~ /,sues, and is reprinted here because it offers a cogent review of the recent history of the culture of design and lays some clear foundations for building a new culture - a discipline of design studies- in the coming decade. Also from Chicago comes another analysis of the tasks facing the world of design in the coming decade - the article by Charles Owen. His particular concern is the need to develop new forms of design education that respond to the challenge of the 'information age'. It is refreshing, and stimulating, to see so much converge on topics and themes but in such diverse formats and from such apparently different starting points as those presented here by Archer, Jones, Buchanan and Owen.

But the convergences - and the stimulation - don't stop there! By chance (!?) we also have three further papers in this issue, submitted by contributors in the normal way but each echoing and developing in depth some of the concerns expressed in the earlier articles and essays. The papers by Black, Blandford, and Ulrich and Seeving are all focussed on the use of computers and computational techniques in design and design educa- tion, and all address issues of complexity and sophistica- tion, and all are optimistic about future progress.

The next decade of design promises to be very exciting. Are we going 'back to the future'? What do you think, Dr Bellamy?

Nigel Cross

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