Knowing
Liberal Arts, Aesthetics, Cultural Studies, Semiotics, Craft Documentation
Indian Aesthetics
Rasa theory, classical traditions, and living visual culture.
Design History & Theory
From Bauhaus to Bezier, the ideas that shaped our discipline.
Semiotics for Designers
Signs, symbols, and the grammar of visual meaning.
Cultural Studies
Design as cultural production, power, identity, and representation.
Ethnography & Design
Fieldwork methods for understanding people in their contexts.
Craft Documentation & Studies
Recording living craft traditions before they are lost to memory.
About the Knowing silo
Knowing is the silo about context. It covers design history and theory, Indian aesthetics, semiotics, cultural studies, ethnography and craft documentation. These subjects explain why design looks and works as it does and whose values it carries.
Many design courses treat theory as an optional extra. This silo treats it as a working tool. A designer who can read a sign system, trace a movement or document a craft tradition makes better and more defensible choices, and writes more convincingly in a portfolio or dissertation.
Suggested learning path
- Indian Aesthetics. This course introduces Indian aesthetic thought, including rasa theory, classical performance and visual traditions, and living craft cultures. Covers foundations of indian aesthetic thought, rasa and bhava, classical and folk visual traditions and more.
- Design History & Theory. Design history and theory traces movements, makers and ideas from the Industrial Revolution to the present. Covers industry and the birth of modern design, arts and crafts to bauhaus, modernism and its critics and more.
- Semiotics for Designers. Semiotics studies how signs create meaning. Covers signs and meaning, icon, index and symbol, denotation and connotation and more.
- Cultural Studies. Cultural studies examines how design participates in power, identity and representation. Covers what culture means, representation and stereotype, power, class and access and more.
- Ethnography & Design. Ethnography uses immersive fieldwork to understand people in their contexts. Covers what ethnography offers design, planning fieldwork and access, observing and writing field notes and more.
- Craft Documentation & Studies. Traditional craft knowledge is transmitted through practice and apprenticeship, rarely through documentation, which means it disappears quickly when that chain breaks. Covers why craft documentation is urgent, tacit vs. explicit craft knowledge, fieldwork ethics & practitioner consent and more.
What you will be able to do
- Place a work in its historical and cultural context
- Analyse an image or product as a system of signs
- Reference Indian and global traditions responsibly
- Document a craft practice ethically
How to study this
Read Design History and Theory first, then choose between Semiotics and Cultural Studies depending on your interests. Take Ethnography and Craft Documentation when you plan fieldwork.
Who it is for
Students preparing essays and dissertations, designers working with heritage or craft communities, and teachers building a liberal arts component.
Frequently asked questions
- Why is Indian Aesthetics included?
- Most design theory is taught from a European starting point. Indian aesthetic thought offers independent frameworks such as rasa that designers can use directly.
- Is this a history course?
- It includes history, but the aim is to give you concepts you can apply to current work.
- Does it connect to the Research track?
- Yes. Knowing courses introduce ideas that the Research track develops in more depth.