Design Fiction Small Box Set

You got The Manual of Design Fiction — and now you need more!

This is your 500 Level Design Fiction Box Set I call the Design Fiction Small Box Set. Sort of rounds things out alongside of the Design Fiction Big Box Set.

So, if you already have The Manual of Design Fiction and are looking to complete your 2023 Collection of Design Fiction materials, artifacts, exemplars, and explainers — this is the set for you. (The only thing you might be missing is The Work Kit of Design Fiction which may still be available..)

The Manual of Design Fiction was our way of putting a stake in the ground — a Big Stake. It's the 'How To..' Manual. 226 pages filled with background, theory, actual projects, examples, reflections, and Q&A that fills in how we've come to practice Design Fiction.

And to go along with that you'll want some actual Design Fiction artifact to dive deep into what is the best, most thorough, full-throated example of a Design Fiction artifact — TBD Catalog.

And then there's my latest book, 'It's Time To Imagine Harder' a/k/a 'The Reader's Guide to The Manual of Design Fiction, a more sober reflections on the existentially critical question: Why do we need Design Fiction now, more than ever?

Let's start with TBD Catalog the sine qua non Design Fiction artifact.

TBD Catalog is the canonical exemplar of Design Fiction — a Product Catalog from some possible future (and, in many cases, an 'adjacent now' as my dear friend Tony Dunne says)

It's filled with everything from the Future of Cocktail Ice to the Future of Barbecue Briquettes and even a Future of The Novel which we are already experiencing, thanks to the generative algorithms of our artificially intelligent companion species.

Now you can study TBD Catalog alongside of The Manual of Design Fiction and dive deeper into the points we make in The Manual — the importance of subtle details, as you'll see in the corners of TBD Catalog's 'Classifieds' section, or the peculiar and futuristic pricing models, warnings, and FAQs. Really, TBD Catalog is an essential Study Guide that should be with every copy of The Manual of Design Fiction.

Now, let's talk about The Reader's Guide to The Manual of Design Fiction, a book I wrote in a fevered re-reading of The Manual. It's really an exegesis in the form of a graphic critical essay when I realized that something crucial was missing — a deep meaningful reflection on Why Design Fiction?

Like TBD Catalog, I consider The Reader's Guide to be equally significant to fully appreciating and then justifying employing Design Fiction in your practice. Someone inevitably will pose to you the unsettling question: 'Yeah. This TBD Catalog is cool and entertaining and witty...but why? What's the point?'

The Reader's Guide answers that directly, and does so in a visually engaging, dare I say — cinematic fashion.

So, here it is — the The Design Fiction Small Box Set. Your post-graduate study box set.