What do you think?
Rate this book
The Invention of Design: A Twentieth-Century History
A critical history of the idea of design—and its utopian promise
Design has penetrated every dimension of contemporary society, from classrooms to statehouses to corporate boardrooms. It’s seen as a kind of mega-power, one that can solve all our problems and elevate our experiences to make a more beautiful, more functional world.
But there’s a backstory here. In The Invention of Design, designer and historian Maggie Gram investigates how, over the twentieth century, our economic hopes, fears, and fantasies shaped the idea of “design”—then repeatedly redefined it. Nearly a century ago, resistance to New Deal–era government intervention helped transform design from an idea about aesthetics into one about function. And at century’s end, the dot-com crash brought us “design thinking”: the idea that design methodology can solve any problem, small or large. To this day, design captures imaginations as a tool for fixing market society’s broken parts from within, supposedly enabling us to thrive within capitalism’s sometimes violent constraints.
A captivating critical history, The Invention of Design shows how design became the hero of many of our most hopeful stories—dreams, fantasies, utopias—about how we might better live in a modern world.
Design has penetrated every dimension of contemporary society, from classrooms to statehouses to corporate boardrooms. It’s seen as a kind of mega-power, one that can solve all our problems and elevate our experiences to make a more beautiful, more functional world.
But there’s a backstory here. In The Invention of Design, designer and historian Maggie Gram investigates how, over the twentieth century, our economic hopes, fears, and fantasies shaped the idea of “design”—then repeatedly redefined it. Nearly a century ago, resistance to New Deal–era government intervention helped transform design from an idea about aesthetics into one about function. And at century’s end, the dot-com crash brought us “design thinking”: the idea that design methodology can solve any problem, small or large. To this day, design captures imaginations as a tool for fixing market society’s broken parts from within, supposedly enabling us to thrive within capitalism’s sometimes violent constraints.
A captivating critical history, The Invention of Design shows how design became the hero of many of our most hopeful stories—dreams, fantasies, utopias—about how we might better live in a modern world.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published June 3, 2025
23 people are currently reading
467 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 6, 2025
The lack of a clear thesis made this tiresome. Maggie Gram shares short biographies of an assortment of rather random Western designers and tries to make a few assertions about capitalism and design thinking, but nothing really landed for me. Was hoping for a lot more.
July 20, 2025
Tracing how design moved from curved handles on tea pots to recommending that a city burdened by wealth inequality and systemic racism change its logo.
September 12, 2025
The flagship state university I work for has a College of Design, which has the following departments: Apparel Design, Architecture, Graphic Design, Human Factors & Ergonomics, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Product Design, Retail & Customer Studies, and User Experience (UX) Design. This book tries to explain 1) how "design" became a field of endeavor in its own right, and 2) how all of these activities came to be encompassed within it.
As other reviewers have noted, it's a quick read--I expected it to be denser than it was. Gram usually introduces a period/phase of "design thinking" via a case study of a person or firm that exemplified it (Eva Zeisel, Walter Teague, Paul Rand, etc.). Sometimes, that exemplar also illustrates the shift in design thinking that occurred while they were active in the field.
Gram is an engaging writer and is clear-eyed about both the promise of "design" and its pitfalls. She both works in the field and teaches the history of design, so she is very conversant in the subject matter, including the societal/political ramifications of different conceptions of design. If you've ever wondered how "design" became "a thing," this book is a good place to start.
As other reviewers have noted, it's a quick read--I expected it to be denser than it was. Gram usually introduces a period/phase of "design thinking" via a case study of a person or firm that exemplified it (Eva Zeisel, Walter Teague, Paul Rand, etc.). Sometimes, that exemplar also illustrates the shift in design thinking that occurred while they were active in the field.
Gram is an engaging writer and is clear-eyed about both the promise of "design" and its pitfalls. She both works in the field and teaches the history of design, so she is very conversant in the subject matter, including the societal/political ramifications of different conceptions of design. If you've ever wondered how "design" became "a thing," this book is a good place to start.
March 17, 2025
Many thanks to NetGalley for this ARC! I am a huge nerd of engineering and design so I was so excited to the chance to read this. The author Maggie Gram is a fantastic writer. She is so compelling to read. This was a relatively short read (vs my normal door-stoppers). If the history of "design" in the larger sense of this word (beyond pure product design) is interesting to you, you will eat this up.
August 30, 2025
A very well done, albeit cursory (which to be fair, makes it quite readable), examination of how design, and the changes in perception of how design should be used to solve problems, evolved during the 20th century.
September 14, 2025
The book is a bit frustrating because it feels like there are two different books mixed in: the one editors and most people want or expect and the one she is more enthusiastic about writing. Her intentions seem a bit disingenuous. Nonetheless, most book parts are good and compensate for that.
August 20, 2025
a great treatise on how to humanely and sanely conduct business, grat fodder for a college seminar on how to work with purpose and inclusiveness
September 3, 2025
I’m not the audience for this book, apparently. It’s the history of the concept of design as told through the stories of specific designers, generally one per chapter.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews