Design, John Heskett
Design, John Heskett
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Design
A Very Short Introduction

Author: John Heskett

Narrator: John Heskett

Unabridged: 4 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/08/2021

Categories: Nonfiction, Art


Synopsis

John Heskett wants to transform the way we think about design by showing how integral it is to our daily lives, from the spoon we use to eat our breakfast cereal, and the car we drive to work in, to the medical equipment used to save lives. Design combines "need" and "desire" in the form of a practical object that can also reflect the user's identity and aspirations through its form and decoration.

This concise guide to contemporary design goes beyond style and taste to look at how different cultures and individuals personalize objects. Heskett also reveals how simple objects, such as a toothpick, can have their design modified to suit the specific cultural behavior in different countries. There are also fascinating insights into how major companies such as Nokia, Ford, and Sony approach design. Finally, Heskett gives us an exciting vision of what design can offer us in the future, showing in particular how it can humanize new technology.

About John Heskett

John Heskett was a British writer and lecturer on the economic, political, cultural, and human value of industrial design. Heskett was a professor at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, and school of design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He was also a visiting professor at universities in Turkey, Japan, Chile, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.

Between the late 1970s and 2010, he published Industrial Design, Toothpicks and Logos: Design in Everyday Life, Design: a Very Short Introduction, and other books. These were considered as significant contributions to the history of design, to the study of design policy, and latterly to the theoretical and applied articulation of the economic value created by design.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Heeren

If you've haven't read tons of design literature, this book is for you, I'm looking at you, confused high school student, college undergrad, and who sort of want to explore design as a career. It's a short and accessible read to have an eagles' eye view of the design field. Historical evolution of d......more

Goodreads review by Lilly

A pretty glossy breeze through design history telling only the successful parts in Heskett's eyes. There's not much about the failures of modernism, though postmodernism (which he clearly isn't into) gets just a paragraph brush off. The book has a lot of bad humanism in it -- design is part of what......more

Goodreads review by Michael

Unfortunately too outdated to be relevant to modern definitions of Design. This introduction largely describes the political and economic impacts of Design rather than the social/behavioural side I was looking for.......more

Goodreads review by Salomé

This is, indeed, a very short introduction to Design. And it seemed a little to broad. I'm PhD candidate in Design and a communication designer, so I read a lot about themes surrounding Communication, Interaction and Information Design, in particularly, and Design in general. So I'm acquainted with......more