Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
This cultural history critically examines product design and its development from pre-industrial times to the present day, considering major milestones in the mass production of goods and services, aiming to incorporate a more inclusive worldview than traditional surveys of the topic.
The breadth and versatility of product design through history has been profound. Products have long supported the integration and interpretation of emerging technologies into our lives. These objects include everything from tools, accessories, furniture, and clothing, to types of transportation, websites, and mobile apps. Products provide singular or multiple functions, are tangible and intangible, and in many instances have impacted the quality of our lives by saving time or money or by increasing feelings of personal satisfaction. At the same time, many products have negatively impacted people and the environment. For nearly every product that makes it into the hands of a consumer, there is also a designer who created it and someone who laboured to make it.
Examines the relationship between products, consumption, sustainability, politics, and social movements. This "pocket history" surveys product design from the agricultural revolution and the birth of cities, through industrialisation, and a digital design revolution.
'This book is timely and will be extremely useful to teachers of design and technologies in secondary schools and as an introduction to product design in tertiary settings.... The design narrative embedded in the book has many mapped twists and turns that occurred throughout history. Very few current texts include the storied lives of both the designers and industrial manufacturing producers and the impacts they had on craftspeople, skilled workers. Together all these people tell the story as they all respond to scientific discovery, social and cultural change and associated political drivers.
I highly recommend this book to all visual art educators who work in the areas of product design and visual art curriculum to build student knowledge of the way social values are embedded in all product design and consumer behaviours.'
— Kathryn Grushka, International Journal of Education Through Art
Laura Scherling, Ed.D., is a designer, researcher, and educator. She is a director and adjunct faculty member at Columbia University, USA.
Figures
Acknowledgements
Author Note
Foreword Don A. Norman, Ph.D.
Part 1: Product Design in Society: An Introduction
1. Product Design and Its Impact
2. Production and Consumption in Design
Part 2: Product Design and Ethical Considerations
3. Product Design and Environmental Sustainability
4. Product Design and Labour
5. Design, Politics, and Social Movements
Part 3: Pre-Industrial Products
6. Surveying Design History from Prehistoric Times
7. Pre-Industrial Design Processes and Craft Guilds
Part 4: Industrialization and the Socio-Economic Impacts of Design
8. Industrialization
9. Design, Social Reform, and a Technological Revolution
10. Modernism, Consumer Culture, and Warfare
Part 5: The Information Age
11. Post World War II
12. A Social and Digital Revolution in Design
13. Digital Products and Immersive Technologies
Epilogue
Author Biography
Index