The six articles in Design&Conflicts represent only a first selection from a much larger bibliography of books, essays, scholarly publications, catalog texts, interviews, conference proceedings, and other material that from different perspectives and experiences questions and reflects around the possibility of constructing a critical position through design. Texts, articles, and materials published almost exclusively in English. Hence the idea of starting a series to translate and present in the Italian context a series of writings dedicated to the relationship between design, speculative approaches, political dimensions, the articulation of conflicts and the construction of critical and situated forms of knowledge.

The first volume proposes some positions and perspectives that have matured over the past three decades in the fields of cartography and information design. Thus we move from the “silences of maps” described by Harley, to the statistical rationality that links thematic atlases and crime maps, crossing the concept of capta opposed to the idea of data theorized by Drucker, to the construction of situated forms of visualization advocated by Hall. Despite their diversity, these texts are linked by a subtle weave capable of stitching together some of the most interesting reflections around the field and practices of data visualization. Reflections that, overlapping the image of conflict described by Mouffe and contextualized by DiSalvo within the field of design, seem able to trace a path toward a new idea of criticism applied to design.