The Invention of Design: A Twentieth-Century History

By: Maggie Gram

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Synopsis: From a brilliant cultural historian, &“a secret history of the twentieth century&” (Louis Menand) told through the story of design and its utopian promises 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.