Design for Life: Our Daily Lives, the Spaces We Shape, and the Ways We Communicate, As Seen Through the Collections of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum

by Susan Yelavich, Stephen Doyle

The National Design Museum in New York is one of the largest repositories of design in the world, with a collection of nearly a quarter of a million objects such as typewriters, tea pots, architectural renderings, lace, wallpaper sample books and posters. This celebration of the Museum's 100th anniversary, draws on its experience of a century of collecting, documenting and studying design. It also displays thousands of the Museum's most prized exhibits. The collection is divided into four curatorial applied arts and industrial design, textiles, wall coverings and drawings and prints, each overseen by a curatorial team responsible for its care, documentation and interpretation. Each section is accompanied by explanatory notes from the Museum's curatorial team.

Genres: Design

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum houses a huge collection of objects, and this book features photos of 500 of them, from typewriters to wallpaper, luggage tags to stage designs, and dinner plates to toilets. Everything humans make has design, be it good, bad, or indifferent, but we don’t normally think about it. Does the design of the object serve its purpose, or is it clumsy to use? Is it beautiful as well as practical? Whether the item is primarily designed by an artist or by an engineer, it’s all designed by the human imagination. I loved looking through this book and seeing examples of jewelry, clothing, furniture, cars, tableware, houses, advertising graphics, and more. Short on text but long on pictures, it’s an easy read as an introduction to design. Five stars.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this on the sidewalk and decided to give it a read. There's not a ton of words but lots of beautiful pictures and interesting captions.

[Frederic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice introduction to design in everyday objects, drawn from the collections of the Cooper-Hewitt.