Design in the U.S.A.

Design in the U.S.A. (2005)
By Jeffrey L. Meikle

Synopsis: "The purpose of this book is to trace the history of design in the U.S. as a functional tool, as an economic force, and as the expression of a consumer culture that continues to transform everyday life" (17). It traces the history of U.S. design from 1790-present, and is divided into five sections: 1) The Emergence of the American System, 1790-1860 (increased urbanization at the end of this period; Americans had democratic passion for physical comforts that influenced design; 1853 NY Exhibition showed fanciness that would soon be available to the middle class too); 2) Art and Industry in the Gilded Age, 1860-1918 (rise of visual appearance over touch-based production; increased focus on taste and personal expression; aesthetic vs. moral views of design; Arts and Crafts Movement, 1880s - ); 3) Designing the Machine Age, 1918-1940 (birth of the industrial design profession in 1930s; rise of streamlining = desire for a less complex world; increased mobility and efficiency); 4) High Design vs. Popular Styling, 1940-1965 (rise of functionalism; rise of populuxe; shift from material to immaterial existence); 5) Into the Millennium: Moving Beyond Modernism (fracturing of any single design vision; playful mixing of postmodern style; information age as extension of modernity). Most interesting argument (as this book is more of a survey as opposed to an argument-driven book) is that the increased malleability of everything in the information age (today) and the increased catering to a multitude of subcultures marks the dissolution of the "modernist vision of rational, universal coherence" (210). American design is largely about the massive proliferation of stuff.

Interesting Specifics:

"...The democratic pursuit of happiness was related to an increasing flow of material goods - all of them products of design" (12).

It is said that design imposes order - but whose order, and for what purposes? (15-16)

Catherine Beecher = 1800-78

Transcontinental Railroad Completed = 1869

Model T Ford = 1908

Frederick Taylor = 1856-1915

Ford shuts down River Rouge plant in 1927.

Fiestaware = 1930s

Journal Industrial Design launched in 1954.

1960s = shift from a material to immaterial world (information age - isnt' this also when "postmodernism" began?)

Defines what it means to be a consumer: "how to invest time and energy in shopping, how to gain emotional release by acquiring material things, and how to construct and express personal identity by arranging and displaying possessions" (52).

"Visual appearance...assumed greater economic and cultural significance, as a 'touch-oriented, local world of production' yielded to a 'sight-oriented, broader world of consumption'" (52).

There were two schools of British design philosophy - the aesthetic and the moral - "one advocating design as a source of visual and tactile pleasure, the other as a source of moral reform" (67).

Tiffany lamp craze was in the 1900s.

Arts and Crafts Movement big in 1880s-1900s.

Stickley started making mission style furniture in 1902.

Industrial design profession emerged in the 1930s.

Streamlining "represented a common assumption that society's larger processes had to be rendered smoother, less complex, more frictionless in operation" (125). Also, "its rounded, enclosing forms, particularly when applied to architecture, suggested a need for protection and stability" (125).

Ford Taurus as radical design breakthrough, and car historians regard it as "'the single most important American production design of the 1980s'" (191).

Says Learning from Las Vegas (1972) launched the postmodern movement (192). [Hmm, don't others say it was a little earlier? Maybe it's that these guys were the first to really defend it and make it a "taste of the people" movement to embrace - ]

Grid was the first laptop.

Interacts With:

Rudeness and Civility, Class (any book that deals with middle class obsession with comfort)
Meaning of Things
Land of Desire (focus on the rise of the visual)
Did consumer culture kill Modernism?