{"product_id":"the-invention-of-design-9781541600645","title":"The Invention of Design","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom a brilliant cultural historian, a fascinating history of the twentieth century told through the story of design and its utopian promises\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Fascinating, rigorously researched.” ―\u003ci\u003eAtlantic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of the Year\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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. \u003cbr\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e But there’s a backstory here. In \u003ci\u003eThe Invention of Design\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.   \u003cbr\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e A captivating critical history, \u003ci\u003eThe Invention of Design\u003c\/i\u003e 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.","brand":"Basic Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67853560185010,"sku":"9781541600645","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0536\/7418\/0786\/files\/9781541600645.jpg?v=1793430227","url":"https:\/\/shop.hachettebookgroup.com\/products\/the-invention-of-design-9781541600645","provider":"Hachette Book Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}