All guides: Furniture Design, Industrial Design and Product Design: Key resources

Academic journal articles

Find journal articles on a broad range of design subjects including product design, industrial design, and furniture design.

Search using the main keywords that describe your topic. For example: “speculative design practice”.

Try the advanced search options for combining keywords and refining your search to find the most relevant search results in the following databases:

ProQuest Central
A comprehensive, multidisciplinary collection, ideal for starting your research on design related subjects.
JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive
JSTOR provides access to a wide range of scholarly content for art and design research.
Taylor & Francis Online
A broad collection of peer-reviewed articles. Including content on industrial and product design.
Bloomsbury Design Library
Bloomsbury Design Library provides cutting-edge scholarly coverage for design research, where you can explore the history and context of influential design schools, people, periods, places, and disciplines.
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals (ProQuest)
Find journal articles on architecture and design, including key research on furniture designers and the practice of furniture design.
DAAI: Design and Applied Arts Index (ProQuest)
The Design and Applied Arts Index (DAAI) contains annotated references from design and craft journals and newspapers including data on over designers, craftspeople, studios, workshops, firms etc.
Wiley Online Library
Wiley hosts a broad, multidisciplinary collection of academic journal articles including content on design.
DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals
Access quality-controlled Open Access Journals and their articles. The Directory covers all open access scientific and scholarly journals including design topics.
ScienceDirect (Elsevier)
ScienceDirect combines authoritative, full-text scientific, technical publications for design research amongst other disciplines.
Business Source Complete (EBSCO)
Industry and market research reports, country profiles, company reports and SWOT analyses. Search business and industry journals for articles about products, brands, strategies and news.
Informit
The Informit Online package provides access to the full suite of Informit products. Informit e-Library provides full text cover-to-cover access to journals, monographs, conference proceedings and other research material relating to design.
Lifestyle & Interiors (WGSN)
Offers online trend-analysis and a research service that provides creative and business intelligence for a range of design industries. First time users need to register and create and account.

MIT Press Direct
MIT Press covers a significant collection of journals and books including material on design themes and subjects.

Material and product information

Designbook
Includes projects from Green magazine, and an extensive listing of supplier products and services to search, collate and share efficiently.
Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA)
The Australian Ecolabel Program provided by GECA uses standards of environmental performance for different product sectors to verify product compliance for the ecolabel.
Selector
Developed in partnership with the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. View photographs, technical data, colours and textures, and much more for thousands of building products.
MaterialDistrict
Design professionals of all industries utilise this platform to discover new material solutions by matching them with their material needs.
University of Texas at Austin, School of Architecture Materials collection
Search the materials collection for composition, form, process, properties, and application. Each entry includes sample images and dimensions, location and availability in our physical library, manufacturer information, and a list of material attributes.

Standards, codes and patents

Standards

Australian Standards Online (Intertek Inform)
Contains the full text of all current Australian Standards and draft Australian standards to which Standards Australia holds the copyright. ISO and IEC standards are also indexed, but the full text is not available online.

ANSI Webstore
Search for standards from over 150 standards publishers. Please do not purchase standards without checking with the library first.
GECA
The Australian Ecolabel Program provided by Good Environmental Choice Australia Ltd (GECA) utilises standards of environmental performance for different product sectors to verify product compliance for the ecolabel.

Building codes

Australian Building Code
The National Construction Code (NCC) provides the minimum necessary requirements for safety and health; amenity and accessibility, and sustainability in the design, construction, performance, and liveability of new buildings (and new building work in existing buildings) throughout Australia.

Patent databases

European Patent Office
Provides free access to the full text and drawings of patents from the European Patent Office, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the Japanese Patent Office. English titles and abstracts are provided for non-English language patents.
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Searchable database of US patents with full text of patent documents.
Google Patents
Search for design patents across many countries.

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Library subject guides

Furniture Design, Industrial Design and Product Design

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