Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World

(Paperback)

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Description

Designer Brooks Stevens created thousands of ingenious and beautiful designs for industrial and household products - including a clothes dryer with a window in the front, a wide-mouthed peanut butter jar, and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. ("There's nothing more aerodynamic than a wiener," he explained.) In 1954 he coined the phrase "planned obsolescence," defining it as "instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary." This book, the first publication to document his work, includes 250 illustrations of designs by Stevens and his firm, many in color, detailed studies of individual designs, interpretive essays, a description of the Brooks Stevens Archive at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and several key writings by Stevens himself.

Reviews

"Uncommonly (and fittingly) well-designed and visually compelling." - Publishers Weekly; "All of [Stevens's] work is thoroughly illustrated, dated, Web-referenced, footnoted, and described in this book to an extent that speaks not only of a lifelong archive, but a level of scholarship and editorial skill rare in design books from any source." - Martin Pawley, The Architects' Journal; "Fascinating not only for its display of the products of Stevens's fertile mind but also for its drawing out of the implications his work bad for social life." - Nancy Tousley, Calgary Herald"

Author Bio

Glenn Adamson is curator at the Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee.