Research Guides: Liberal Arts & Sciences Research Guide: Visual Culture: Design

Step #1: Encylopedias

Getting started? Become an instant expert by using an academic encyclopedia. Unlike Wikipedia, these often can be cited in your research papers!

Oxford Art Online
Oxford Art Online offers access to the most authoritative, inclusive, and easily searchable online art resources available today. Through a single gateway, users can access and cross-search Oxford’s acclaimed, regularly updated art reference works: the Grove Dictionary of Art and the Benezit Dictionary of Artists.
Includes over 200,000 articles that span ancient to contemporary art and architecture, as well as over 19,000 images of works of art, structures, plans, and artist signatures
Credo Reference
Full text articles from over 600 academic encyclopedias, guides, handbooks. Use the concept map for a visual mind-mapping tool.

Step #2: Library Books

Situating Child Consumption by Bengt Sandin (Editor); Johanna Sjoberg (Editor); Anna Sparrman (Editor)
Call Number: HF5415.332 C45 S42
ISBN: 9185509701
Publication Date: 2012-11-26
How do children understand issues of work, marketing, money and scarcity? In Situating Child Consumption the contributors offer a provocative stance rethinking values and notions of children, childhood and consumption.
On the Button: The Substantial Significance of an Everyday Item by Nina Edwards
Call Number: NK3670 E38
ISBN: 9781848855847
Publication Date: 2011
'On the button' is an inventive and unusual exploration of the cultural history of the button with all its metaphorical and lexical suggestiveness. It tells tales of a huge variety of the button's forms and functions, its sometimes uncompromising glamour, its strongholds in fashion and literature, its place in the visual arts, its association with crime and death, its tender call to nostalgia and the sentimental.
The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature / by Jeff VanderMeer
Call Number: PN3448 S73 V2
ISBN: 9780810989580
Publication Date: 2011
Discusses the steampunk movement in fiction, film, art, music, and fashion, tracing its history from Victorian science fiction novels and detailing its evolution into modern popular culture.
The Creative Process Illustrated (How Advertising's Big Ideas are Born) by W. Glenn Griffin and Deborah Morrison
Call Number: HF5823 G74
ISBN: 9781600619601
Publication Date: 2010
Most design books capture the results of good ideas, but very few capture the idea-generation process in way that can inspire fresh thinking and better work. This book represents a rare and remarkable look into the creative process of the top minds in advertising, and answers the question, "How are big ideas born"?
Wicked! Design on the Edge of Bad Taste by Volker Albus et al.
Call Number: TS171.4 W42
ISBN: 9783034607223
Publication Date: 2011
"This book is about blood, violence, and weapons, about sex and genitals, bowels, bodily fluids, and decay. And yes, it is about design -- because a rift is developing in the world of aesthetically designed and everyday objects. Lamps shaped like weapons, bloody dishware, a gasmask as showerhead, a dildo in the form of a crucifix, a coffee cup sporting breasts, jewelry made from real teeth.

Step #2a: Library Catalogue Search Tips

For BEST results:

remember that visual culture research combine DESIGN and studies in HUMANITIES (psychology, sociology, anthropology)
given that the library print collection specializes in art/design topics already, try "subject keyword" searches on broad humanities subjects; such as: anthropology; sociology; political science*
- use * for variants of root word (ex. Canad* will search Canada, Canadian, Canada's, etc.

The library PRINT collection has only limited titles for humanities research; so Try Ebook Central for ebooks:

Ebook Central

Step #2b: Ebooks

The Design of Material, Organism, and Minds by Michael Hampe (Editor); Silke Konsorski-Lang (Editor)
ISBN: 3540689958
Publication Date: 2010-03-01
Made in Canada: Craft and Design in the Sixties by Alan C. Elder
ISBN: 0773528733
Publication Date: 2005
Designerly Ways of Knowing by Nigel Cross
ISBN: 1849965730
Publication Date: 2010-10-13

Step #3: Journal Articles

Art & Architecture Source
Combines content from Art Full Text, Art Index Retrospective (1929-1984), Art & Architecture Complete. Provides access to more than 630 international full-text journals and thousands of images, books and magazine articles.
Help Guide
Art, Design and Architecture Collection
This collection provides full-text access to more than 400 journals and magazines with subject coverage of design, crafts, architecture, philosophy and history. It includes the art and design indexes ARTbibliographies Modern, Design and Applied Arts Index and the International Bibliography of Art.
Canadian Business and Current Affairs (CBCA) Complete
This database is a longstanding, comprehensive Canadian periodical collection covering multiple subjects and topics, with millions of full-text records. Accessible to readers and researchers at every level, the Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database features a diversified mix of publications, including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, reports, radio and television transcripts, news, dissertations, and more. Includes Canadian Art Magazine.
Help Guide
JSTOR
The JSTOR archive includes the backfile content of more than 2,500 research journals in a variety of disciplines. OCAD U Library currently subscribes to fourteen JSTOR archival collections: Arts & Sciences I XIII and Life Sciences (includes Biological and Health & General Science) collections. As part of JSTORs agreement with publishers current issues are not typically available on the platform (often the most recent 2-5 years) but may be accessible through other library databases.