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Make It New: The History of Silicon Valley Design
California's Silicon Valley is home to the greatest concentration of designers in the world: corporate design offices at flagship technology companies and volunteers at nonprofit NGOs; global design consultancies and boutique studios; research laboratories and academic design programs. Together they form the interconnected network that is Silicon Valley. Apple products are famously "Designed in California," but, as Barry Katz shows in this first-ever, extensively illustrated history, the role of design in Silicon Valley began decades before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak dreamed up Apple in a garage. Offering a thoroughly original view of the subject, Katz tells how design helped transform Silicon Valley into the most powerful engine of innovation in the world. From Hewlett-Packard and Ampex in the 1950s to Google and Facebook today, design has provided the bridge between research and development, art and engineering, technical performance and human behavior. Katz traces the origins of all of the leading consultancies-including IDEO, frog, and Lunar-and shows the process by which some of the world's most influential companies came to place design at the center of their business strategies. At the same time, universities, foundations, and even governments have learned to apply "design thinking" to their missions. Drawing on unprecedented access to a vast array of primary sources and interviews with nearly every influential design leader-including Douglas Engelbart, Steve Jobs, and Don Norman-Katz reveals design to be the missing link in Silicon Valley's ecosystem of innovation.
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First published September 4, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 1, 2022
I don't know how I missed "Make It New: A History of Silicon Valley Design", a book from 2015, but it is one of the greatest gems about the history of Silicon Valley, about the birth of multimedia technologies, but in particular about how design, not development, became the center of technological creation. I have read dozens of books on this history, but this book by Barry M. Katz, Professor of Industrial Design and Interaction at the California College of the Arts and a Fellow at IDEO, Inc. It was, without a doubt, one of my most rewarding reads of 2022.
In the blog you will find a structure of the historical evolution - from computer technologies to interaction and game design - with a considerable amount of excerpts (I hope I will not receive any requests to remove the excerpts from online): https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
In the blog you will find a structure of the historical evolution - from computer technologies to interaction and game design - with a considerable amount of excerpts (I hope I will not receive any requests to remove the excerpts from online): https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
January 6, 2016
Useful history but dry
Lots of great nuggets in here, and reminders of how many pioneers we owe a debt of gratitude. But a little mixed up organizationally, leaves a lot out, and is a little too much like a laundry list of people and accomplishments.
But important history to know; I'm glad someone started to capture.
Lots of great nuggets in here, and reminders of how many pioneers we owe a debt of gratitude. But a little mixed up organizationally, leaves a lot out, and is a little too much like a laundry list of people and accomplishments.
But important history to know; I'm glad someone started to capture.
June 20, 2016
Reading this was essential for me as a Silicon Valley designer.
July 7, 2020
Great records about the strategic role of industrial designers in silicon valley.
January 28, 2018
The good news:
Stories about Silicon Valley technology and/or the entrepreneurs seem to appear daily. But books on Silicon Valley design, the "how" consumers interact with products - has never had its own history - until now.
Katz traces the history of design from "make the sheet metal look the same across the product lines" through the "how do users interact with a computer," to the Steve Jobs era of, "the design is the product."
Full disclosure, one of the companies I worked for is mentioned in the book and I can assure you the attitude of "what the heck is this designer doing telling us about the future of user interfaces. No one will ever want overlapping and movable windows. Real men was fixed 80x40 fixed character displays" actually happened. We threw her out of the engineering planning meeting. Honest.
The bad news:
While the story does follow this narrative, the thread gets a bit muddled as Katz tries to describe the ever-changing focus of the design _firms_ themselves in parallel with how design _philosophies_ evolved with the valleys new technologies.
And that points out one of the missing opportunities of the book. Given that it's a history of Silicon Valley design firms along with the history of design in the valley, one would have expected a great graphic to illustrate the timeline. Nope. (You would have thought Katz could have asked all the design firms to work on one!) Hopefully someone will do just that.
One curious omission. If you ask any consumer about design and Silicon Valley I doubt any could name any of the firms. But they would point to Steve Jobs/Jony Ives in making design a "must have" for consumer products. I found the short shrift he gave them a bit unusual.
Finally, the last third of the book seemed like an attempt to mention every design firm in the valley and include their elevator pitch. It amplified the unease I had with some of the earlier oblique references to why designers left firms or firms split up. The author seems a bit too close to his subject.
Summary:
The first half of the book, tracing the history and roles of the first designers and the evolution of design, was enlightening and invaluable.
Kudos to the author for delivering a piece of missing Silicon Valley history.
Worth having on your shelf.
Stories about Silicon Valley technology and/or the entrepreneurs seem to appear daily. But books on Silicon Valley design, the "how" consumers interact with products - has never had its own history - until now.
Katz traces the history of design from "make the sheet metal look the same across the product lines" through the "how do users interact with a computer," to the Steve Jobs era of, "the design is the product."
Full disclosure, one of the companies I worked for is mentioned in the book and I can assure you the attitude of "what the heck is this designer doing telling us about the future of user interfaces. No one will ever want overlapping and movable windows. Real men was fixed 80x40 fixed character displays" actually happened. We threw her out of the engineering planning meeting. Honest.
The bad news:
While the story does follow this narrative, the thread gets a bit muddled as Katz tries to describe the ever-changing focus of the design _firms_ themselves in parallel with how design _philosophies_ evolved with the valleys new technologies.
And that points out one of the missing opportunities of the book. Given that it's a history of Silicon Valley design firms along with the history of design in the valley, one would have expected a great graphic to illustrate the timeline. Nope. (You would have thought Katz could have asked all the design firms to work on one!) Hopefully someone will do just that.
One curious omission. If you ask any consumer about design and Silicon Valley I doubt any could name any of the firms. But they would point to Steve Jobs/Jony Ives in making design a "must have" for consumer products. I found the short shrift he gave them a bit unusual.
Finally, the last third of the book seemed like an attempt to mention every design firm in the valley and include their elevator pitch. It amplified the unease I had with some of the earlier oblique references to why designers left firms or firms split up. The author seems a bit too close to his subject.
Summary:
The first half of the book, tracing the history and roles of the first designers and the evolution of design, was enlightening and invaluable.
Kudos to the author for delivering a piece of missing Silicon Valley history.
Worth having on your shelf.
November 16, 2025
M'ha agradat molt aquest llibre des d'una perspectiva instructiva, ja que explica una història essencial del meu camp d'estudis sense la qual segurament no hauria trobat la meva zona de confort en passar hores al Photoshop creant i creant.
El problema és que és una lectura enriquidora però seca. L'autor té poca gràcia ordenant i narrant aquesta història, i té moltíssima sort de què el contingut sigui fascinant en si mateix, o no hauria passat de les primeres pàgines. És una narració altament tècnica no recomanable per algú que no té ni idea del tema i vol endinsar-se en aquest món, ja que la quantitat de noms propis que aquest home és capaç de fer cabre en un mateix paràgraf és obscena. La portada, també, és víctima d'una espécie d'involució: No et crida a llegir el llibre. És minimalista i no pensada des d'una perspectiva humana, un pecat als ulls de la història de Silicon Valley.
En quant al contingut en sí, BRUTAL. El disseny es va fer a si mateix; és la seva pròpia mare.
El problema és que és una lectura enriquidora però seca. L'autor té poca gràcia ordenant i narrant aquesta història, i té moltíssima sort de què el contingut sigui fascinant en si mateix, o no hauria passat de les primeres pàgines. És una narració altament tècnica no recomanable per algú que no té ni idea del tema i vol endinsar-se en aquest món, ja que la quantitat de noms propis que aquest home és capaç de fer cabre en un mateix paràgraf és obscena. La portada, també, és víctima d'una espécie d'involució: No et crida a llegir el llibre. És minimalista i no pensada des d'una perspectiva humana, un pecat als ulls de la història de Silicon Valley.
En quant al contingut en sí, BRUTAL. El disseny es va fer a si mateix; és la seva pròpia mare.
September 8, 2019
A comprehensive, extremely well-researched history of Silicon Valley and what we come to know as design today. I appreciate the documentary-ready narrative, one sprinkled with self-deprecating sarcasm and double-edged Valley-speak. He somehow makes a boring “origin story of tech” a fascinating and empathetic adventure of peoples’ dreams coming to life.
February 5, 2018
Meh.
Takes history and removes all the vignettes that make it relevant. There is nothing in the book that says "This means that." Instead, it is a highly technical narrative. In other words, a poorly designed narrative in a book on design.
Made it about 25% of the way through.
Takes history and removes all the vignettes that make it relevant. There is nothing in the book that says "This means that." Instead, it is a highly technical narrative. In other words, a poorly designed narrative in a book on design.
Made it about 25% of the way through.
October 29, 2018
Excellent book. Highly recommended.
January 5, 2021
A great history lesson on American product design
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April 30, 2021great historical book.
January 2, 2022
Me ayudó a entender y conectar puntos.
December 8, 2015
This is a wonderfully well written book that gives us deep insight into the evolution of design thinking and its emergence in Silicon Valley. I am suggesting the book to all of our USBCT clients that participate in our Design Thinking workshops here in Taiwan. I know they will find it very useful as Taiwan now seeks to build and brand its own products and services and sell/market to a global, multicultural audience.
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January 21, 2016DL027794 PTI
July 5, 2020
Reads like a History book. Full of facts. Not many insights/takeaways. Can be really dull if you are not that interested in design.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews