In this podcast Peter and Mieke discuss the second of three learning objectives for the DTM course: the articulation of design theory and methodology through story creation. 

Storytelling has very much become a buzzword for designers in all kinds of activities but it applies in a very particular way to the DTM course where it is used to mean capturing, communicating, and explaining a process of inquiry, with film being a natural media with which to tell stories with. 

Peter and Mieke begin by discussing the idea of storytelling and how it relates to theory on the one hand, and practice on the other. They go on to talk about what isn’t storytelling (in terms of the course), before going on to discuss the criteria by which stories will be assessed and what that means for the content of a film.

During the podcast the Netflix series on design called ‘Abstract’ is mentioned. Abstract is a series of documentary programmes on “the art of design” that are worth watching, both from the point of view of discovering some interesting ideas and disciplines, but also with the ‘critical’ frame of reference that we talked about in the previous podcast. What do these programmes leave out about the practice of design, for example?