A critical history of the idea of designand its utopian promise

Design has penetrated every dimension of contemporary society, from classrooms to statehouses to corporate boardrooms. Its 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 theres 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 designthen repeatedly redefined it. Nearly a century ago, resistance to New Dealera government intervention helped transform design from an idea about aesthetics into one about function. And at centurys 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 societys broken parts from within, supposedly enabling us to thrive within capitalisms sometimes violent constraints.

A captivating critical history, The Invention of Design shows how design became the hero of many of our most hopeful storiesdreams, fantasies, utopiasabout how we might better live in a modern world.