Industrial strength design : how Brooks Stevens shaped your world /
How Brooks Stevens shaped your world
Glenn Adamson ; [essays by John Heskett, Kristina Wilson, Jody Clowes].
- xi, 219 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 28 cm
Published to accompany an exhibition held at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 210-211) and index.
Preface / Acknowledgments / The Desire for the New: The Context of Brooks Stevens's Career / Brooks Stevens, the Man in Your Life: Shaping the Domestic Sphere, 1935-1950 / Brooks Stevens: "Ego-Inspiring Styling" and the American Dream / Career and Designs / Less Than Perfect: Early Influences and First Designs, 1911-1934 -- The Right Place at the Right Time: Becoming an Industrial Designer in the Midwest, 1935-1940 -- The Prophet of Profit: Stevens in Wartime, 1941-1945 -- The Organization Man: Stevens' Best Years, 1946-1955 -- The Enfant Terrible of Industrial Design: Planned Obsolescence and Other Crimes Against Modernism, 1956-1978 -- The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous: Reluctant Retirement, 1978-1994 -- Brooks Stevens Staff, 1935-1980 -- Writings / The Brooks Stevens Archives at the Milwaukee Art Museum. David Gordon -- Glenn Adamson -- John Heskett -- Kristina Wilson -- Jody Clowes -- Glenn Adamson -- Brooks Stevens -- 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. App. 1. App. 2. App. 3.
"Designer Brooks Stevens created thousands of ingenious and beautiful designs for industrial and household products - including a clothes dryer with a window in the front, a wide-mouthed peanut butter jar, and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. ("There's nothing more aerodynamic than a wiener," he explained.) In 1954 he coined the phrase "planned obsolescence," defining it as "instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary." This book, the first publication to document his work, includes 250 illustrations of designs by Stevens and his firm, many in color, detailed studies of individual designs, interpretive essays, a description of the Brooks Stevens Archive at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and several key writings by Stevens himself."--BOOK JACKET.