Review: Martin, Craig. Deviant Design: The AdHoc, the Illicit and the Controversial

Borders tend to be interesting places. Things happen at the margins, where different cultures and ways of being meet. In Deviant Design: the Ad Hoc, the Illicit, the Controversial, Craig Martin returns to themes addressed in his earlier book, Shipping Container, concerning smuggling, counterfeiting, and the way that illegal trade is symbiotic with the legal.1 In the process we are told much about the subterfuges employed by those wishing to move illicit cargoes and the methods used by those who would convince us of the value of their dubious wares. At the same time, Martin wants to use such practices to reflect more widely upon what design is and how it changes, and what this tells us about consumerism and the nature of society. To do this he takes the term deviance and transposes it from the domain of sociology and cultural studies and places it in the realm of design.