Alice Rawsthorn

Critic; Writer; Lecturer / Architecture; Fashion Design; Graphic Design; Interior Design; Product Design / United Kingdom /

10 Great Books on Product Design

The toughest thing about choosing ten great books on product design was whittling down the long list. Product design may not have as erudite or provocative a critical culture as graphics or architecture, but it is so rich and complex a subject that it has inspired some wonderful books. . . . View the complete text
3 books
Richard Sennett
Like Roland Barthes, Richard Sennett approaches the making of objects from a very different field, in his case as an academic, social scientist and the founding director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, who is best known for his work on the sociology of cities. In The Craftsman, he explores the changing concept of craftsmanship throughout history, from ancient Roman brickmakers, medieval guilds, Enlightenment Paris, and the Industrial Revolution, to software programmers, lab technicians, and even musicians. . . . View the complete text
Victor Papanek
Victor Papanek didn’t think much of designers—industrial designers especially. “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few of them,” he wrote in the opening line of Design for the Real World. “And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have in order to impress others who don’t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today. Industrial design, by concocting the tawdry idiocies hawked by advertisers, comes a close second.” . . . View the complete text
Robert Grudin
From Sen no Rikyu, the 16th-century Buddhist priest who killed himself rather than acquiesce to a Japanese warlord’s demand that he compromise the purity of the tea ceremony, to Pope Paul V, who orchestrated the transformation of Donato Bramante and Michelanglo’s St. Peter’s Basilica into a bombastic, over-styled “baroque barn,” Design and Truth by the American philosopher Robert Grudin names and shames the heroes and villains, respectively, of design history. . . . View the complete text
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