Design in the USA

by Jeffrey L. Meikle

From the Cadillac to the Apple Mac, the skyscraper to the Tiffany lamp, the world in which we live has been profoundly influenced for over a century by the work of American designers. But the product is only the end of a story that is full of fascinating questions. What has been the social and cultural role of design in American society? To produce useful things that consumers need? Or to persuade them to buy things they don't need? Where does the designer stand in all of this? And how has the role of design in America changed over time, since the early days of the young Republic?
Jeffrey Meikle explores the history of American design, from the hand-crafted furniture and artifacts of the early nineteenth century, through the era of industrialization and the mass production of the machine age, to the information-based society of the present, covering everything from the Arts and Crafts movement to Art Deco, modernism to post-modernism, the MOMA to the Tupperware bowl. Beautifully illustrated, Design in the USA also includes suggestions for further reading, a timeline, and a list of relevant museums and web sites. It is an excellent source of information for anyone seeking to uncover the imagination and industry behind American design.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Art

252 pages, Paperback

First published May 5, 2005

Reviews

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jeffrey L. Meikle’s Design in the USA traces “the history of design in the US as a functional tool, as an economic force, and as the expression of a consumer culture that continues to transform everyday life.” Although he grapples a bit with the definition of “design,” Meikle seems content to consider it a post-Industrial Revolution concept referring to object creation that involves mass-produced factory production in lieu of old world craft workshops. Thus, industrial designers and their relations to business, consumer tastes, and product creation are given primary consideration in Meikle’s narrative. Rather than follow tradition with minor tweaks steered by individual customers, the design process became a highly innovative process of anticipating the needs and tastes of broad segments of society. Organized into five chapters, Meikle’s narrative suggests the emergence of an “American System” by the mid-nineteenth century in which design mediated between consumption and production. From here he discusses the effects of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Art Deco style that gave way to machine aesthetics and streamlining from objects ranging from clocks to cars to vacuum cleaners to locomotives. Postwar consumption trends and industrial design responses are discussed with postmodern styles of the 1980s and computer aesthetics of the late 1990s rounding off the scope of his analysis. At the macro scale, Meikle moves from the foundation of the American nation in the late eighteenth century to the final years of the millennium contending that “the history of design in the US had come full circle” to neatly suggest that modern customers are now able to design/customize their own products and shop online on personal computers in a way that more closely resembles the craft-client relation of the pre-industrial era. Although this is a brilliant observation with a pithy ring to it, it is important to understand that this relationship between consumer and designer is still not fully realized nor is it universally applicable. Industrial designers are still designing certain objects in an attempt to meet the needs of a broad base of consumers and many consumers still primarily rely on non-computerized forms of consumption. However, his early identification of this shift back toward customization by consumers is a smart observation and a clever ending to his history of design in the USA.