The Pratt Manhattan Gallery has imported a show from London that highlights the work of seven leading British designers: “My World: The New Subjectivity in Design.” The show — originally created by the British Council, which promotes the country’s culture abroad — seeks to make the case that design should free itself from the straitjacket of globalization and mass production.

What’s tricky here is that most of the designers on display have furthered their careers with corporate commissions. So the message seems akin to an environmentalist driving an SUV to a lecture he is giving on the need to reduce car pollution. Even so, “My World” is refreshingly free of the shrill “smash-the-system” contemporary art that is all the rage in Britain. The idea of subjectivity here seems mainly to address the idea of designers creating personal takes on time-honored craft practices that normally would be the preserve of the tradesmen.

Commissioned by the Australian contemporary arts organization Experimenta, and curated by Emily Campbell, head of design and architecture at the British Council, the artists in “My World” range from digital video manipulators such as Danny Brown and design group Neutral to textile designer Allison Willoughby. Ms. Campbell argues that the seven designers produce work that illustrates the current vogue for customization: “After 150 years of modernism and mass design, we’re tired of standardization,” she says. “There’s a desire for differentiation. The symptoms are everywhere — you see it in Levi’s made-to-measure jeans, for instance. People have started appreciating designers who have stories to tell or something which has their handwriting on it.”

The designers in “My World” consciously blur the distinction between art and craft. Director of exhibitions at Pratt Institute, Nick Battis, found the exhibit by Googling the words “crossing the disciplines between art and design.” In his view, the British design scene is in more vigorous shape than America’s. “It’s more open, and there’s more playfulness. The ‘My World’ designers have taken some chances with their careers,” he said.

An eclectic mix of designs is packed into Pratt’s small space. Digital artist Danny Brown’s “Software as Furniture” consists of a pristine white bed on which dazzling interchanging pixel patterns of teddy bears, robots, and monsters are projected. It serves as a contrast to his compatriot Tracey Emin’s Turner Prize-nominated squalid unmade bed, which was shown at the Tate Britain in 1999.

Upon leaving Mr. Brown’s technological splendor, one is confronted by Allison Willoughby’s circle skirts. Her 16 sizeless skirts — on which are small collages made from fabric, paint, dye, and glass — are strikingly attractive, although they don’t seem to say much about the wider question of design and subjectivity.

It would also be unwise to select the “Kebab” lamp as part of design’s fight against globalization. Created by Harry Richardson and Clare Page, the husband-and-wife team known as Committee, “Kebab” consists of an assortment of objects skewered on a standing lamp, mostly soft toys and figurines from Deptford Market, a bustling fruit, vegetable, and antique market in Southeast London. Though novel, their random bric-a-brac forays lack narrative logic. They fare better with “Fly Tip,” an arresting wallpaper variation of 18th-century garlanded paper in which flowers are replaced with detritus including a cell phone, a discarded pink doll, and a traffic cone.

Just as ingenious is the installation “Lunuganga Shelves” by the design partnership WOKmedia. Michael Cross and Julie Mathias reproduce a miniature swamp in a Sri Lankan jungle by creating twisted bookshelves made from twigs and roots. The Asian feel of the show is heightened by the work of Doshi Levien, an alliance between designer Nipa Doshi and trained cabinet maker Jonathan Levien. The pair has re-created a shop in an Indian market to remind us that antiquated economic practices endure. A mattress, emblazoned with the checkered board markings of Chaupar, a popular Indian board game, is situated next to a matlo, a rounded terracotta vessel that cools water by up to 14 degrees without refrigeration. Doshi Levien’s elegant simplicity evokes the relationships between buyer and seller and creator and object that lies at the heart of this exhibit.

“My World” might give us a useful snapshot of the current design scene in Britain, but it also illustrates just how much London has become a global village. Aside from Committee’s rummages at Deptford Market, about the closest you find to a comment on English identity are the tomes by Graham Greene and modern art subversives Gilbert and George sitting precariously on WOKmedia’s bookshelves.

This exhibition induces a nostalgia for the time when design products were termed “commercial art” while providing a platform to designers who deploy cutting-edge technology. Neutral’s video installation “Rescape” depicts a distorted aerial view of a landscape that starts out familiar before becoming blighted by extreme weather conditions and large-scale buildings.

But it is Mr. Brown’s generative animation that proves the highlight of “My World.” In addition to his bed, he casts mesmeric shifting kaleidoscopic patterns over banal white ceramic plates and bowls. Brown’s sophisticated designs effectively critique the excessive consumptive power exerted by brands. I’m relieved to have viewed them after I did my Christmas shopping.

Until February 23 (144 W. 14th St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-647-7778).