The Invention of Design: A Twentieth-Century History -- Maggie Gram, Hardcover
From a brilliant cultural historian, a fascinating history of the twentieth century told through the story of design and its utopian promises "Fascinating, rigorously researched." ―Atlantic A New Yorker Best Book of the Year Design has penetrated every dimension of contemporary society, from classrooms to statehouses to corporate boardrooms. It's seen as a kind of mega-power, one that can solve all our problems and elevate our experiences to make a more beautiful, more functional world. But there's a backstory here. In The Invention of Design, designer and historian Maggie Gram investigates how, over the twentieth century, our economic hopes, fears, and fantasies shaped the idea of "design"--then repeatedly redefined it. Nearly a century ago, resistance to New Deal-era government intervention helped transform design from an idea about aesthetics into one about function. And at century's end, the dot-com crash brought us "design thinking" the idea that design methodology can solve any problem, small or large. To this day, design captures imaginations as a tool for fixing market society's broken parts from within, supposedly enabling us to thrive within capitalism's sometimes violent constraints. A captivating critical history, The Invention of Design shows how design became the hero of many of our most hopeful stories--dreams, fantasies, utopias--about how we might better live in a modern world.
Author: Maggie Gram
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 6/3/2025
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15 lbs
Size: 9.3" H x 6.4" L x 1.2" W
ISBN: 9781541600638
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