Digital Dreams


Book Description

For the past half century, the Sony Corporation has been highly successful at tapping the seductive nature of consumer electronics. Around the globe their products are recognized as symbols of cutting-edge technology and innovative design, making Sony the undisputed leader in high tech and one of the most recognized brand names in the world. This book takes an unprecedented look inside the world's most influential design center and their products--many never before published--for the next millennium. With nearly 250 industrial designers--graphic, packaging, and logotype designers, user-interface specialists and Web designers--working in offices from Tokyo to San Francisco to Cologne, the Sony Design Center is responsible for nearly 2,000 new products, concepts, packaging schemes and design strategies every year. By shaping the most pivotal technologies of our time, the Design Center exerts a greater influence on popular culture and current trends in industrial and graphic design than any other single entity.--From publisher description.




Sony Design


Book Description

An impressive book dedicated to the innovative designs of Sony, a trailblazer in personal electronics and pioneer of the legendary and highly successful WALKMAN®, Handycam®, and other portable electronics. Emerging from the ashes of the Second World War, Sony Corporation pioneered the miniaturization of electronics and created some of the most innovative technologies of the postwar period. Following the model of one of its founders, Masaru Ibuka established Sony with the goal of doing what had never been done before. Beginning with the TR-63 from 1957, the world’s first truly pocket-sized transistor radio, Sony launched the consumer microelectronics industry and gave rise to some of the most memorable products that transformed the way billions of people consume media. Notable for their ease of use, Sony’s products embody the utility of good design and have themselves become objects of desire. This book beautifully catalogs their vast achievements in design and impact on global culture for almost seventy years. In-depth case studies from Sony’s archives on the development of the WALKMAN, the Handycam, the flat-screen TV, and the PlayStation make this the definitive history of Sony design. Through Sony’s relentless pursuit of innovation, this book is a tribute to the passion that continues to live on in their products today. With a stunning cover and interior design inspired by some of the most memorable Sony products, this book is a must-have for design and technology enthusiasts.




Premium by Design


Book Description

There are luxuries that most of us will never be able to afford in a lifetime, but just off the shores of the moneyed is a huge, fast growing, land of premium value which inspires people to get there, even if they need to stretch their budget to reach it. Premium by Design is a thoroughly researched, well argued and well presented study that identifies how global business leaders have succeeded in achieving margins by design. Thanks to original tools and processes, this book shows how you might also succeed. It is about better, but reachable and real, products and services. The book features insights from the world of customer science and design research. The key challenge for the world today is finding out how sustainable is the underlying process that is driving this apparent desire for more and more indulgent material possessiveness? This book might not have all the answers, but it will provoke and trigger a long overdue debate in the premium and image driven industries about tomorrow's values. As a result it is a must read for anyone in this market, or aspiring to it.




Design Culture Now


Book Description

Written and assembled by three leading critics and curators, Donald Albrecht, Ellen Lupton, and Steven Skov Holt, the book explores the design artifacts and practices that will define the twenty-first century."--BOOK JACKET.




Twentieth Century Design


Book Description

A look at the wider issues of design and industrial culture throughout Europe, Scandinavia, North America, and the Far East. The book explores the way in which 20th-century designs such as the Coca-Cola bottle have affected our culture more than those considered true classics




Design


Book Description







Doing Cultural Studies


Book Description

In recent years `culture' has become a central concern in a wide range of fields and disciplines. This book introduces the main substantive and theoretical strands of this `turn to culture' through the medium of a particular case study: that of the Sony Walkman. Using the example of the Walkman, the book indicates how and why cultural practices and institutions have come to play such a crucial part in our lives, and introduces some of the central ideas, concepts and methods of analysis involved in conducting cultural studies.




A Dictionary of Modern Design


Book Description

Over 950 entries From the Arts and Crafts Movement to Postmodernism, Apple to Frank Lloyd Wright, this fascinating dictionary covers the past 160 years of international design, with accessible entries on branding, graphics, industrial design, functionalism, and fashion. New entries on digital design and sustainable design bring the coverage up to date. The dictionary's international focus takes in major movements, key concepts, design terminology, and important design institutions, museums, and heritage sites. The new edition reflects the growing global importance of design, with coverage of India, China, the countries of the Pacific Rim, Eastern Europe and East Asia, and demonstrates how developments in the design of technology influence everyday life, with new entries on fonts, games developers such as Gunpei Yokoi of Nintendo, Android, Samsung, and Blackberry, and a fully revised entry on Apple. The A-Z entries are complemented by an extensive bibliography and a timeline.




Design in the USA


Book Description

From the Cadillac to the Apple Mac, the skyscraper to the Tiffany lampshade, the world in which we live has been profoundly influenced for over a century by the work of American designers. But the product is only the end of a story that is full of fascinating questions. What has been the social and cultural role of design in American society? To produce useful things that consumers need? Or to persuade them to buy things that they don't need? Where does the designer stand in all this? And how has the role of design in America changed over time, since the early days of the young Republic? Jeffrey Meikle explores the social and cultural history of American design spanning over two centuries, from the hand-crafted furniture and objects of the early nineteenth century, through the era of industrialization and the mass production of the machine age, to the information-based society of the present, covering everything from the Arts and Crafts movement to Art Deco, modernism to post-modernism, MOMA to the Tupperware bowl.