The Language of Things: Design, Luxury, Fashion, Art: how we are seduced by the objects around us [Paperback]

Deyan Sudjic can write! It's about design and yet it is written in an such an easy-to-read and inviting way that makes it unputdownable. Very well worth your time to read it.

In five chapters -- language, design and its archetypes, luxury, fashion, art -- Deyan Sudjic provides a interesting view on design, beyond mere function, usability, aesthetics and commerce, in which objects are seen as carriers of meaning.

More an essay than an academic work, the first two chapters will be a feast of recognition for many designers. These chapters nicely describe meaning creation in a manner tacitly known by the design community but which is hard to find summarized in written format. The remaining three chapters dive into newer and more difficult territories: luxury in an age of perfected mass production, fashion as a driver of built-in obsolescence and continuous cultural change, and value creation in high design. In these chapters, Sudjic offers many intriguing arguments, accompanied by interesting examples.

Unfortunately, the author's writing is not entirely convincing, making a 'stream of consciousness' impression. Sudjic's argumentation sometimes wavers and its red thread is not always obvious. Subjects are often left behind with the same abruptness that they are dropped onto the reader. The author's decision to dispense with subchapters, sections or any other way to structure his reasoning certainly does not help and makes it difficult to retrace the steps in his argumentation. Though an essay on meaning creation can naturally be expected to take a post-modern approach, I found the chapter endings a little too fluffy and the take-away of each chapter unclear. The relationships between the chapters also remain vague.

Whilst I had expected the author to tie the constituent chapters together in the epilogue, Sudjic instead focuses on the impact of the economic crisis. Surprisingly he does this in an almost apologetic manner: "After excess comes sobriety". This is a rather unexpected turn of events as in the preceeding 190 pages the author does not touch anywhere upon meaning creation in relationship to back-to-basics design approaches, let alone sustainability. Though this did not feel like a glaring omission at any point whilst reading the book, the epilogue suddenly draws attention to it and unnecessarily causes meaning creation to be associated with glitzy superficiality, undoubtedly the exact opposite of what the author intended.

Sudjic may not be Roland Barthes (Mythologies (Vintage Classics)), Penny Sparke (Design & Culture), Adrian Forty (Objects of Desire: Design and Society Since 1750) or Peter-Paul Verbeek (What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design), yet this book still forms a nice, light-hearted complement to the existing literature on semiotics and design history. 'The Language of Things' should be compulsory reading for first year design students for its ability to popularize semiotics and to illustrate how design is about so much more than just aesthetics, engineering and business economics.

After attending a lecture by Deyan Sudjic, I was interested in reading his book - The Language of Things.
Although Design is becoming an increasingly complex discipline to define, Deyan Sudjic not only introduces it in the context of the modern world and how it has evolved, but also discusses the emotive and practical overlap between design and its reluctant neighbours, fashion, art and luxury culture.
This book provides a broad contextual and historical overview with text peppered with fascinating and well observed specific examples.
This is an enjoyable, informative and thought provoking read - a must for anyone with an interest in Design and how it relates to Culture.