2.2 Design Evolution in Literature
Marcos Antonio de Lima Filho, PhD.
The following subsections present the results of a semi-systematic literature review organised by journals. The aim here is to consolidate how the issue of design evolution has been discussed in the world’s leading design research journals:
Design Issues
Design Studies
International Journal of Design
Journal of Design History
She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation
The Design Journal
This literature review was semi-systematic. This approach holds that the research process should be transparent and should have a developed research strategy (Snyder, 2019). The reviewing process started with the identification of the relevant journals (listed above) and keywords (Darwin, Lamarck, Steadman, and Basalla). The keyword “evolution” did not retrieve significant results because it has a very elastic and unspecific meaning. For example, searching for “evolution” brings 652 results in The Design Journal. However, a closer inspection revealed that most of these entries did not have much to say about evolutionary views of the design activity. In these works, evolution was taken in a myriad of meanings: to indicate the evolution of a technique, a method (e.g. 3D printing), as well as changes in society and customer preferences. That is, the majority of these papers had not referred to evolution as a body of knowledge from the natural sciences.
In comparison, searching for the terms Darwin, Lamarck, Steadman, or Basalla rendered more specific and meaningful results. The history of Charles Darwin or Jean Baptiste de Lamarck is much of the history of evolutionary theory. It is, indeed, very difficult to write about evolutionary theory without mentioning these forefathers. Regarding the development of technological evolution, Phillip Steadman and George Basalla have played comparable roles in their respective fields. Consequently, this group of keywords (Darwin, Lamarck, Steadman or Basalla) had a high affinity with the literature of interest here. This search strategy has identified 138 records published between 1979 and February 2021 (see Figure 2.2.1).
Appendix A lists the included and excluded articles, as well as the reasons for exclusion and irrelevance. The irrelevant articles often carried references to other “Darwins”, such as Erasmus Darwin, Robin Darwin (former Rector of the Royal College of Art), or the Australian city of Darwin. References to Steadman’s The Geometry of the Environment were not considered relevant; unlike The Evolution of Designs, this work does not discuss evolutionary theory.
In conclusion, this review has demonstrated that the issue has been limited to only a handful of scholars and papers (e.g. Hybs & Gero, 1992; Langrish, 2004; 2014; Yagou, 2005; Whyte, 2007). It has also identified relevant literature published outside the domains of peer-reviewed design research journals, such as books (Steadman, 1979/2008; Basalla, 1988; Eger & Ehlhardt, 2018) and theses (Ehlhardt, 2016).
Despite lacking peer-reviewed status, I consider that such non-peer-reviewed contributions do excel the peer-reviewed group. Steadman’s 1979 book is a case in point. The Evolution of Designs: Biological Analogy in Architecture and The Applied Arts was later republished and modestly extended in 2008. The fact that a book is re-edited almost three decades later can signify that its issues and ideas have stood the test of time.
That being so, I urge scholars and editors to address the scarcity of academic research on design evolution. Journal editors may inadvertently hinder this agenda by excluding theoretical developments from a journal’s aims and scope. It is a warning sign that a significant part of the theoretical discussion on design theory is being published and better developed outside the peer-reviewed space.
Design Issues
Design Issues has published some of the most interesting essays on the subject of design evolution, especially the ones authored by John Langrish (2004; 2014) and Jennifer Whyte (2007). Despite their substantial contribution to the debate, it is still a limited number of essays for more than a decade of editions.
Langrish (2004) criticises the Spencerian notions of progressive evolution that, according to him, have dominated discussions of evolution in design. “The notion of progress from simple to complex is a key part of Spencer's evolution", but this view does not correspond with how neo-Darwinists understand evolution. Langrish also criticises notions of “a progressive evolution towards their most perfect form":
There is no such thing as a perfect mammal, perfect kettle, perfect car, or perfect tree. In all cases, they exist as different varieties which have to fit into different environments. “Progressive evolution towards a perfect form” is an example of what Ernst Mayr refers to as “finalism” or “the belief that the living world has the propensity to move towards ever greater perfection” (Langrish, 2004).
According to Mayr (2001), supporters of finalism “postulated the existence of some built-in force (...) but Darwin emphatically rejected such obscure forces”. Besides addressing the issue of progress, Langrish counters various arguments opposing the evolution of designed objects. These arguments include the assertion that “artefacts do not have a life on their own”, the law of propulsion, and the argument that manufactured goods lack an “internal genetic structure”. Langrish (2004) contrasts Lamarckian and Darwinian principles, asserting that “if we wish to discuss design evolution, we have to consider Darwinian natural selection”.
In “Evolutionary Theories and Design Practices”, Jennifer Whyte (2007) discusses the applicability of evolutionary theories and how these can inform design practices. She notes that “despite the development and refinement of scientific theories of evolution, erroneous beliefs in progressive evolution have been widely influential, and are still deeply entrenched in debates on technological evolution” (Whyte, 2007). Thus, Whyte agrees with Langrish’s observation that “many of our evolutionary ideas are confused or pre-Darwinian”, and both agree that such views “should be replaced by a non-progressive Darwinism” (Langrish, 2004).
Like Langrish, Whyte (2007) argue that the Darwinian concepts of variation and selection provide a firmer foundation for theorising about design. However, “because we have some control over the selection system, it might be thought that the evolution of kettles and bicycles is a form of artificial selection, like animals being bred by humans” (Langrish, 2004). Artificial selection was, indeed, the starting point of Darwin’s On The Origin of Species. For Darwin, the evidence of artificial selection was self-evident, a technique practiced by English breeders for generations. He, thus, draws an analogy upon numerous examples of artificially selected breeds of dogs, horses, cattle, and many sorts of crops, to propose another mechanism of selection: natural selection. As for design, the selection occurs as:
Ideas compete for resources, first within the head of an individual designer, then within an organisation, and then in the selective world of purchasers and users (Langrish, 2004).
In this instance, Langrish appears to suggest a directional relationship. However, a bi-directional framework could also be applicable: the world of purchasers and users (i.e., the market) may serve as a source of ideas. Companies in the fast-fashion industry are known to employ this model, seeking ideas already endorsed by consumers before initiating mass production.
Langrish also demonstrates that design is not a closed-ended game like natural selection. He notes that an animal’s evolutionary advantage, or fitness, is determined by its environment, which includes factors such as other animals, energy sources, and potential hazards. However, human design certainly deviates from this natural determinism:
Humans can imagine something that does not exist and organise resources to make it exist (…) The problem is that the best designer in the world has no way of knowing what the future will bring. Assumptions about what would make an improvement are notorious for coming up against unanticipated obstacles (Langrish, 2004).
In this aspect, the design activity differs from natural selection with its deterministic selecting environments. I believe that both the ideas (artefacts) and the selection environments (markets, culture, and the overall society) are in perpetual change. Thus, there is always an imbalance of present artefacts (supply) with current and future needs (demand).
In agreement with Langrish, Whyte argues that the concepts of variation and selection offer a valuable theoretical perspective for examining long-term changes within design families. As Whyte (2007) states, “Design families display variation, competition among variants, inheritance of characteristics, and the accumulation of successive cultural modifications over time.”
The principles of variation and selection are crucial for any evolutionary system, as they have significant consequences for competition and the accumulation of knowledge. Without variation, there can be no competition, while the lack of inheritance prevents the continuous accumulation of past successes. Of course, the inheritance of designed artefacts does not happen through DNA synthesis between pairs (e.g. male and female), but through a synthesis of ideas (e.g. the current artefact vs its imaginable future version).
Despite this, Crabbe (2013) challenges the idea that the evolution of natural and artificial forms is genuinely analogous. He notes the limitations of tracing an evolutionary tree of a product, such as smartphones:
The “evolution” of smartphones might better be characterised as the result of a convergence of components borrowed from both computer and communication technologies, which have themselves started to converge in terms of both components and systems. This notion of technological convergence opposes the image of branches bifurcating from a common ancestral root in the “tree of life” metaphor, which Darwin famously used to illustrate his evolutionary theory (Crabbe, 2013).
Crabbe’s observation is on point. However, there is little novelty here. Cultural evolutionists have been aware of such significant differences since the 1920s, at least. Steadman also highlighted such limitations in his book The Evolution of Designs, published back in 1979: “Cultural evolution seems to be characterised by lineages that can separate and reconnect again – the pattern is ‘reticulate’ or netlike – as ideas or designs for artefacts are brought together into new combinations” (Steadman, 1979/2008). The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber conveyed this in his diagram published back in the 1920s. In technological evolution, explains Ziman (2000), the recombination of “genes” from diverse lineages is a common occurrence, and “multiple parentage” is the standard: “No biological organism is like a computer chip, which combines basic ideas, techniques and materials from a variety of distinct fields of chemistry, physics, mathematics and engineering” (Ziman, 2000).
In Correspondence: Incremental Radical Innovation, Langrish debates with Norman and Verganti on the issue of optimisation and local maxima. Langrish inquires about the lack of any reference to the concept of local maxima, as it appears in evolutionary biology, in Norman and Verganti’s article titled Incremental and Radical Innovation.
Langrish’s basic idea is that technologies undergo a series of incremental modifications until they reach a local maximum, beyond which any further alterations may prove detrimental. Using a hill as a metaphor, Langrish (2014) says that “Entities can climb up a hill of gradual improvement until they reach the top where further small changes will only move downward”. According to Langrish, the idea of local maxima in human design first appeared in 1862 when Eilert Sundt visited England and was impressed by Charles Darwin. The Norwegian sociologist then wrote a paper giving a Darwinian model of gradual technical change. In his shipbuilding account, he noted that a gradual series of changes come to a stop when “each kind of improvement has progressed to the point where further developments would entail defects that would more than offset the advantage” (Langrish, 2014).
Langrish also questions Norman and Verganti’s proposed conceptualisation of Radical Innovation. Norman and Verganti (2014) distinguish between incremental and radical innovation, claiming that the latter comes about through either technology or meaning change. Langrish recurs to the authority of George Basalla’s classic study, The Evolution of Technology, and his assertion that “every new artefact is based to some degree upon a related existing artefact” (1988). Langrish also notes that Norman and Verganti (2014) stated that “a completely novel innovation is impossible. All ideas have predecessors and are always based on previous work — sometimes through refinement, sometimes through a novel combination of several pre-existing ideas.” What seems to puzzle Langrish is, “Where then is radical innovation, and how is it different from hill climbing in a rugged terrain with many peaks connected by ridges?”. This issue highlights the potential pitfalls of relying on metaphors.
In brief, Langrish’s primary concerns revolve around the authors’ omission of “the concept of local maxima as it occurs in evolutionary biology” and their “reluctance to follow the Darwinian explanation of innovation”. He questioned, “Why don’t they stick with Darwin?” (Langrish, 2014). In response, Norman and Verganti (2014) argued that “we wrote a paper on product evolution and he [Langrish] chides us for failure to cite the literature in evolutionary biology”. The authors defended their position asserting that “the problem of reaching global optimisation has been well-studied in many disciplines”, being “very widely-known, and in our opinion so well known that they are not necessary to cite nor are they open to discussion” (Norman & Verganti, 2014).
Design Studies
Design Studies has the first peer-reviewed article discussing the relationship between design and evolutionary theory. The journal’s first issue includes the final chapter of Steadman’s “The Evolution of Designs.” This 1979 book delves into the history of analogies drawn between the design of artefacts and the “design” of organisms, dating back to the early nineteenth century (Steadman, 1979/2008). With a background in architecture, Steadman describes many interesting examples, not only of architects and designers but also of philosophers and other theorists who have sought inspiration from the field of biology (Eger & Ehlhardt, 2018). What makes Steadman’s work even more compelling is his examination of evolutionary analogies that were established prior to the publication of The Origin of Species:
There is a very general idea that technical progress in building, the accumulation of structural, material and engineering knowledge and the refinement of constructional form and technique, have been the product of extended historical processes of trial and error by many generations of architects and craftsmen. This idea occurs very widely in the theoretical literature of the nineteenth century, and cannot indeed be attributed to any specifically Darwinian analogy, especially since it is to be found well developed before 1859 (Steadman, 1979/2008, p. 79).
The Evolution of Designs leaves few doubts that (1) the biological analogy has a long history in design and architecture, and that (2) such intersections have emerged before Darwin’s public works. To demonstrate that, Steadman brings succinct and illuminating synopses of influential theorists, such as Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), Horatio Greenough (1805-1852), Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), and others. Interestingly, Cuvier’s work titled True Principles of Beauty in Art (1849) includes an entire chapter that presents the history of medieval architecture using evolutionary terminology. According to Steadman (2005), what Cuvier describes “can without exaggeration be described as a proto-Darwinian method for design”.
Although Steadman accepts the evolutionary analogy, he also confronts several fallacious uses of it. His book explores how a superficial reliance on the parallel between biology and design has contributed to the rise of functional and historical determinism. “If cultural evolution is equated with organic evolution”, concludes Steadman, “the individual designer or craftsman tends to fade away, and even disappears altogether”:
Certainly his conscious and deliberate contribution to the creation of designs is seriously underestimated and undervalued. In natural evolution the production of fitness (i.e. “design”) is achieved entirely through selection, working on variations in the animal body which are generated randomly or fortuitously. If the same is imagined to be true of technical evolution, then the only role for the manufacturer of artefacts is that of copying and of making small accidental or ‘blind’ changes as he does so (Steadman, 1979/2008, p. 181).
In this extreme view, according to Steadman, the designer has only an error-correcting function. The real “designer” is the “selective” process which is constituted of testing of the object in practical terms (Steadman, 1979/2008, p. 182). Following from that, Steadman argues that such functional determinism disappears with the designer, its individuality, and purposeful action:
Just as Darwin inverted the argument from design, and “stole away” God as designer, to replace Him with natural selection, so the Darwinian analogy in technical evolution removes the human designer and replaces him with the “selective forces” in the “functional environment” of the designed object (Steadman, 1979/2008, p. 182).
However, such extreme “functional determinism” is not what tech evolutionists defend. A Darwinian understanding of technological evolution can be conciliated with the human agency and creativity behind innovative designs. Unfortunately, Steadman did not consider that in the 1979 edition of The Evolution of Designs. It is only decades later, in a new Afterword, that Steadman would modestly acquiesce that designs are subject to selective pressure by consumers, markets, and also within companies:
Ideas are in competition and are selected in the minds of inventors, designers and engineers. Potential products are tested and selected for production within firms. As we have seen, firms themselves may be selected, in part on the merits of their goods or services. The buying public selects goods in the market place. And so on (Steadman, 1979/2008, p. 266).
Despite his extensive work, Steadman “did not provide a clear explanation of how designers can benefit from the evolutionary analogy” (Eger & Ehlhardt, 2018, p. 22). Still, the author did touch on several themes of an evolutionary and Darwinian theory of design. Throughout his work, Steadman discusses issues such as continuity, gradualism, replication, change, variety, novelty, fashion, and technical progress.
Unlike Steadman, Hybs and Gero (1992) have understood the role of consumers and markets as selecting agents of design innovation. They realise that “the users decide about the utility and desirability of designs and therefore about the survival or extinction of designs.” According to these authors, there are three areas where the similarity between natural evolution and design can be seen: the cyclical nature of both processes, the influence of the environment on the outcomes of each, and the continuity of designs. They conclude:
A parallel could be drawn between the process of natural selection in biology and the procedure of examining and rejecting design propositions and ultimately the acceptance or rejection of the finished product or artefact. The process of selection would be seen in the design context as the survival of the design/artefact which best fits the actual environment (Hybs & Gero, 1992).
Therefore, “the mechanism of selection in design should probably be seen as the impact of ‘market forces’, that is, the acceptance or rejection by end-users” (Hybs & Gero, 1992). The authors model a design process based on these evolutionary premises. Hybs and Gero seemingly draw these propositions from an analogy with natural selection, yet they do not provide empirical evidence to substantiate their claims. In this thesis, I present numerous instances of market selection where traditional companies were forced out of markets, potentially due to subpar product designs. The concept of purifying selection (Chapter 8) proposed here involves customers actively replacing, discontinuing, or rejecting a particular design feature.
Hybs and Gero also antedate the cyclical notion of design, which would become mainstream in the late 2000s, especially with the emergence of design thinking. “To initiate the design process,” they observed, “it is necessary to have a ‘seed’ design or design concept at the beginning of any design process as the point of departure”. This cyclical aspect becomes evident when one verifies that companies often organise product lines within families: the iPhone 15 is the successor to the iPhone 14, which is the successor of the iPhone 13, and so on; or when aircraft manufacturers derive from flagship models (e.g., the A320) a series of smaller (A318, A319) and stretched versions (A321, A321LR). Design is, therefore, an iterative cyclic process of generation and refinement (Hybs & Gero, 1992).
Unfortunately, Hybs and Gero’s mathematical modelling of evolutionary design makes it less attractive for a predominantly qualitative research tradition. In addition, the study is not empirical.
Compared with the previous works, the other papers published in Design Studies have drawn much less from evolutionary theory. In the following articles, evolutionary concepts have played a very marginal role:
The Roles That Artefacts Play explores how some notions of natural selection can be extended to the design of artefacts, “either because a similar selection takes place in the environment in which artefacts are designed, or in the environment in which they are used” (Crilly, 2010). Both users and designers are selecting agents.
Collaborative Problem–solution Co-evolution in Creative Design (Wiltschnig et al., 2013) briefly references universal Darwinism. The paper holds a co-evolutionary view of design based “on the biological concept of two species interacting so intimately that their evolutionary fitness depends on each other”.
Collective Design in 3D Printing (Özkil, 2017) concludes that “collective design has deep and strong evolutionary roots”. It defines Design Evolution Trees (DET), which are “phylogenetic trees that stem from root designs and branch through multiple generations of derivatives” (Özkil, 2017). Except for phylogenetics, several evolutionary and Darwinian concepts are outside this study’s scope.
Parametric Design Thinking (Bhooshan, 2017) mentions the philosopher Daniel Dennett and his extension of the Darwinian evolutionary model, especially the memetic approach espoused by Richard Dawkins, to the specific cultural fields of design technology and design intelligence. Then, Bhooshan (2017) concludes that Darwinism in design can be thought of as a cognitive model in relation to the current discussion on design thinking.
Journal of Design History
The Evolution of the Bicycle (van Nierop et al., 1997) shows that bicycle evolution has diverged and converged in a non-linear way. A “linear” process would entail that “new models would logically follow previous models and that the process should be equally spread over time.” This was not the case here.
The late 19th century is marked by a considerable diversity of bike models. Examples are the “Draisienne”, the “Boneshaker”, the “Ordinaries” with wheels of unequal size, bicycles with direct chain drive, with front-wheel drive, and so on (van Nierop et al., 1997). Such model variation, though, gave way to the “modern bicycle” introduced in 1892. It incorporated a diamond frame built of cheap straight steel tubes, wheels of equal size, and pneumatic tyres (van Nierop et al., 1997).
The authors demonstrate how such evolution was not linear. Both successful innovations as well as failures in the evolution of human-powered vehicles were beneficial to the development of the modem bicycle (van Nierop et al., 1997). Furthermore, they reveal that multiple components of the modern bike can be traced back to innovations that were first pioneered in tricycles or four-wheeled human-powered vehicles. Pneumatic tyres, for example, were initially invented for tricycles. This component was quickly adopted into bicycles and light vehicles. The pneumatic tyre drastically improved bicycle comfort and speed, making the bike more user-friendly and allowing many different types of use (Ehlhardt, 2016).
Ultimately, the “modern bicycle” would quickly emerge as a dominant bike design. The authors use sales figures as a fitness measure of competing designs, demonstrating how the modern bicycle has impacted the market space and survival of alternative models. Since then, bikes have gone through an era of incremental change (directional innovation).
Evolutionary theory and its concepts have played a modest role in other papers published by the Journal of Design History. The Interpretation of Ornament explores some aspects of nineteenth-century ornamentation. “Art Botany” was the first attempt to combine scientific instruction with design training (Brett, 1988). As a result of this approach, organicist design theories emerged, which emphasised the use of natural forms and materials in design. According to Brett (1988), the English art and design curriculum has incorporated biological and biotechnical analogies since its inception. These analogies have created a conflation between the principles of good design and the laws of natural form. While there is no doubt that the natural world can serve as a source of inspiration and guidance for designers, such visual analogies may not fully incorporate the complex processes of adaptation and selection that have led to them.
Translating Properties into Functions is a case study of the introduction of automatic transmission into two distinctive user cultures: the American and the European markets. The first had a preference for automation, while the Europeans had “a reluctance to follow the American example”. Europeans seemed to lay so much emphasis on their wish to “command” the engine that they refused to have their transmissions automated (Mom, 2008). This difference highlights the co-evolution of technology and culture: “The relationship between the two is the result of a continuous process of translation of functions into properties, and vice versa, executed through the ‘practices’ of users and producers alike” (Mom, 2008).
The paper Pioneers and Barbarians explores the impact of American modernist design culture on Dutch industrial design during the interwar years (1930-45). Erres, a prominent manufacturer of electrical household goods based in the Netherlands, did adopt a streamlined styling in its product lines. Erres vacuum cleaners were designed to evoke associations with fish and aquatic mammals, which was a deliberate choice to symbolise progress (de Rijk, 2009).
The Design Journal
Searching for the terms “Darwin”, “Lamarck”, “Steadman”, or “Basalla” in The Design Journal brings up 12 publications. However, like in previous journals, most of these entries did not discuss Darwinian thought or evolutionary thinking in substance. Exceptionally, Yagou’s paper (2005) brings a thoughtful discussion of design and evolutionary theory. To a lesser extent, Jankovic (2012) references natural selection to introduce a discussion of emergence and bottom-up systems thinking in design.
The Design Journal was established in 1998 and publishes six issues per year. In my opinion, it is unfortunate that the discussion of design and evolutionary theory has been limited to only a few papers in most design journals. The shortcomings of such a little discussion are highlighted by Yagou (2005), with potential implications for design education and design praxis. The author defends the significance of a Darwinian evolutionary perspective for design history. From this perspective, “good designs are not ideal forms, but fitting forms which have evolved through adaptation processes within particular social, economic, and technological contexts.” This contrasts with how “dominant historical narratives of design have relied heavily on linear and progressive approaches”:
The modernist tradition in particular has created a series of misunderstandings which encompass two aspects: the functional and the stylistic. As far as the functional aspect is concerned, perfection in modernism could be reached through a predictable path. This view was best expressed by Louis Sullivan’s famous quotation that ‘form follows function’ (Yagou, 2005).
Sullivan conceived of his slogan as an all-pervasive natural law, and this view has led to “aesthetic ideals considered to be unquestionable and inescapably leading to ‘good’ design” (Yagou, 2005). This search for absolute values has promoted the perception of design as “having general or universal properties”, and “devoid of any contextual or culturally-produced meaning”. However, as demonstrated by Michl (1995), the modernist movement was driven by highly formalist objectives, despite its functional credentials. These objectives resulted from the designer’s own aesthetic preferences, albeit disguised as the alleged plans of nature or history (Yagou, 2005).
It is in this context that Michl (1995) and Yagou (2005) introduce natural selection as an argument against the Sullivan formula. The modernist belief that “form follows function” requires that “designers should start from ‘function’ and arrive at the allegedly only possible formal solution pertaining to such function” (Michl, 1995). However, if taken this way, the doctrine is “totally incompatible with the Darwinian explanations of functional adaptations in nature as we accept them to be true today” (Yagou, 2005).
In contrast, from an evolutionary perspective, “good designs are not ideal forms, but fitting forms which have evolved through adaptation processes within particular social, economic, and technological contexts.” (Yagou, 2005). Thus, the search for higher adaptation would lead designers to “start from forms at hand and see how any of them could be used, whether unchanged or redesigned, to solve the particular task” (Michl, 1995).
This change in theoretical views carries significant implications for both design practice and design education. The shift would lead us to recognise the design activity as culturally rich, contextual, collective, gradual, continuous, and complex. Yagou (2005) also criticises the functionalist tradition has been widely exploited for commercial purposes, and for promoting and selling products as cultural icons.
Jankovic (2012) investigates an emergence-based approach to systems thinking in design. In its introduction, the author touches on the issues of variation and natural selection. Jankovic argues that, during the early stages of design, there is a larger number of designs of the same kind of artefact (greater variation). Then, at later stages, such variation tends to converge towards a smaller number of improved designs. For instance, the first sets of cars, bicycles, computers, mobile phones and other artefacts were much more diverse than the more optimised designs that we find around us today (Jankovic, 2012).
Norman (2003) makes a brief reference to Darwin’s 1872 study of The Expression of Emotion in Animals and Man. This study is referenced again by Ho and Siu (2012), along with other scholars and theories of emotion. Haidamous (2017) discusses the role of design in synthetic biology and biomimetics. The paper briefly mentions the role of natural selection in Darwinian thought. D’Itria and Lucchio (2017) justify using hexagonal patterns by mentioning Darwin’s conclusion that the hexagonal honeycomb is “absolutely perfect in economising labour and wax”.
International Journal of Design & She Ji
There are no relevant articles discussing evolutionary theory, its concepts, or advancing an evolutionary view of design in these two journals. The keywords “Darwin”, “Lamarck”, “Steadman”, or “Basalla” retrieved four papers in the International Journal of Design. The keyword “Darwin” is, at best, mentioned only once in the body of the text (excluding the reference list) of these papers (see Appendix A: Table A4).
These keywords bring only two papers in the She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation. However, such keyword matches are contained in the reference list. In addition, these two papers did not advance on evolutionary issues of design practice and theory (see Appendix A: Table A6).
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