The Invention of Design

“A sharp, perpetually surprising, connection-filled excavation of how ‘design’ came to rule our present. You won't look at your phone, your chair, or the horizon the same afterward.”

“This book is the secret history of the twentieth century. Maggie Gram introduces us to a cast of characters whose names you have never heard of, but whose ideas produced the user-friendly look and feel of our world. Her approach is beautifully balanced. She distinguishes the ingenuity from the hype—and there was a lot of hype. But she shows us that although design alone will not cure all the inequities of life under capitalism, it can help.”

“This is a book I’ve been waiting for. Gram effortlessly synthesizes across histories of industry, geopolitics, craft, and social movements, animating each with characters both known and obscure — the dreamers, pragmatists, revolutionaries, bureaucrats, and CEOs who all shaped the big tent known as design. Erudite, ambitious, and plain-spoken, The Invention of Design is an ideal companion for the reader who wants to see design made newly strange and contingent.”

“A stunner. In a series of absorbing, well-crafted episodes, Maggie Gram both lures you into the world of design and poses hard questions about it. This book goes down easy but packs a wallop.”