New American Design

by William Aldersey

Profiles twenty-one of America's leading young industrial and graphic design firms, discussing the backgrounds, influences, working methods, and views of today's artists

192 pages, Hardcover

First published October 20, 1988

Reviews

[EmelineB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting experience to return to this book in 2021 - so many products that were innovative at the time, which didn't quite yet have a fixed shape, have since become ubiquitous... and far, far less interesting. The book offers a great contextualisation of graphic design and industrial design history and its relation to critique and to Europe in introduction, before moving to 'case studies' of studios or companies demonstrating, for the author, the vanguard of american design of that decade. The many of the formal explorations of personal computers are in themselves worth picking up this book. I'd love a follow up examining how we went from the graphic design experimentations of that decade, the first involving computers, to today's trends.
The foreword is by Ralph Caplan.