Due to a rapidly transforming world, design education needs to adjust itself. To do so, it is essential to understand curriculum gaps in the discipline. This systematic review (n = 95) reports on these gaps and the future readiness of design curricula. The search strategy consisted of both a database search, and discipline-specific journal search in which generalised results about current or future perspectives of design education were found. Structured around the constructive alignment framework, this research found that more 21st century learning objectives focusing on skills next to domain-specific knowledge need to be incorporated, and teaching and learning activities need to be more student-centred and better aligned to industry. Related to assessment, a considerable gap was found in literature on guidelines and means for formative assessment. Design education is not yet ready for the challenges ahead, therefore, the authors hope that design departments rethink their curricula and fill the specified gaps.

Perhaps more than any other professional group in modern history, designers have felt compelled to undertake the responsibility of addressing and engaging with societal problems in their practice. Initially, this liability involved concerns of form and production methods during the industrial revolution era, and developed into existential, ethical and context‐specific (Western) priorities of working and living during the twentieth century. Today, citizenship by design involves efforts that are directed to wards creating social change for and with the audience. Drawn from empirical research, this article presents the challenges met and lessons learnt when introducing human‐centred design practices to Visual Communication Design (Graphic Design) students in Turkey. As a self‐reflexive study, it draws from students' reception and feedback on a studio project on social awareness, accessibility and authority sharing with visually impaired people, and an applied workshop on the benefit of user collaboration in design. It aims to raise questions of relevance and assimilation of a socially oriented design practice in a non‐Western, commerce‐driven economy at the urge of modernisation. Moreover, acknowledging the strong element of conformity with peer members in Turkish society (such as the government, family and teachers), this work also aims to examine hierarchy‐challenging design practice in and outside the Turkish classroom.

In recent years, the responsibilities of designers have drastically shifted as the world we live in becomes increasingly more complex. Correspondingly, educators advocate for an adaptation of design education in relation to the shifting economy, technological and societal advances. The question therefore is how to design the future of design education in a way that it corresponds better to these shifts. Traditionally, university curricula are updated on a department level together with faculty members. Under this localized practice, programs update one course at a time. During this routine hardly any other stakeholders are involved. By reviewing universities' practices around the world towards reforming their curricula, it was found that design programs can benefit from shifting towards a systemic, design-based, and research-through-design approach, specifically, by using design research methodologies, namely, co-creation, stakeholder involvement, questionnaires, trend analysis, benchmarking, focus groups, interviews, prototyping and the application of an iterative mindset. In agreement with Cross (1982), the authors call for a more designerly way of thinking in order to update design curricula. By re-considering conventional approaches regarding curricula reform practices, this paper presents recommendations for designing design education to define future university study programs.

As in other countries across Europe, Greece's post-war reconstruction was directed toward rebuilding and reshaping the war-torn nation. 1 The country's desperate call for international help was transmitted immediately after the end of the occupation in late 1944 via radio broadcasting, as well as through graphic means, such as charts, maps, and diagrams. These graphic forms were presented at several fairs and events in 1945 in key cities around the world (see Figure 1), 2 and they were compiled a year later to form an ISOTYPE-inspired album (see Figure 2). 3 In its volume, production quality, and graphic style, the war album was a testimony to two important accomplishments in the history of graphic design in Greece: First, it signaled awareness and appropriation of an international modern language to participate on equal terms and in common ways in the international forum of post-war reconstruction; 4 and second, it served as acknowledgment by the Greek state of the economic and political role of graphic design in international communication.

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