BOOK

The invention of design : a twentieth-century history

Gram, Maggie, author

2025

Overview

\"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\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Subject: Design Social aspects History 20th century.
• ISBN: 9781541600638

Item info:

1 item available

1 item total in all locations

Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
NK1390 .G73 2025	1	BOOK	WAITINSERT