Design: The Definitive Visual History (DK Definitive Cultural Histories)

Design offers a definitive visual history of all essential design movements and characters over time. Making this a great book for any design student or enthusiast who seeks to extend their knowledge of design. The book offers a breakdown of all movements ranging from Arts and Crafts to Postmodern and Contemporary, whilst providing detailed analysis of the most iconic designers motifs and products throughout eras. The book is well written with detailed illustrations and photographs, set out in a very function fashion making it a pleasurable read. I would highly recommend this book to any design enthusiast or those looking to extend upon design knowledge. GCSE and A level students would especially find this book beneficial as a majority of AQA's and Edexcel's Product Design key areas of study are featured.

Bought this as a gift for my daughter and she loved it

Interesting range of designs featured

Greenspirit books sold this to me and the customer service was fabulous. The book arrived in great condition, as advertised. The book is beautiful, and perfect for those interested or studying design that want a broad introduction to the topic. Lots of excellent photographs.

One of the best generalist books on design I've ever come across. Get it out from your local library to see what I mean, and then buy yourself one, or ask someone for it as a birthday/Christmas present. It would be great if everyone in their teens could have one, it's inspiring.

For what is a classic coffee table book, it arrived with dents and scratch s to the hardcover. Disappointing.

Excellent covers history of design from 1850 onwards with excellent illustrations a classic DK Book always well illustrated and informative. One of my children is wanting to be a designer lots of inspirational ideas here.

It’s extremely hard to rate this book, and my 3/5 stars shouldn’t be taken literally. Instead, it is intended to be a heads-up to others looking to purchase this book. This is my fault for not researching further, but from the product photos, I believed there would be more time devoted to 2D/graphic design. In reality the subject appears in only a select few spreads, and is showcased via not much more than a few Bauhaus posters that were shown at GCSE level Art & Design almost two decades ago (by which I am saying that it’s the most brief and school-level summary of graphic design). The vast majority of the extremely chunky book is dedicated to, well, chairs. And I do mean a HUGE proportion of the book is about chairs. I understand that furniture design is a huge and important field of design, but it’s far from the only field. There were two spreads for vehicle design (bicycles and cars respectively), a few for telephones, and I was unable to find any pages for any other product design or user experience design or really anything other than chairs. I think the book, and the idea of a “visual definitive history of design” suffers quite a lot from taking far too much of a broad approach to design. What is “fashion” but clothes design? So perhaps more areas of design should have had their own book just as the Fashion book in the same series does. Chair design alone can clearly fill an entire book, it almost does here. But what of product design, interface design, more vehicle design, advertisements, packaging, etc.? I’m sure the book is fantastic, it has so many highly positive reviews and perhaps if I was a furniture designer I would find it an invaluable concise history. I can’t in good consciousness rate it badly just because it isn’t for me. However, I also cannot rate it highly, because I struggle to accept this as a definitive visual history (despite yes, the importance of chairs), when so little of design seems to be represented. Even my closest area of expertise (packaging design, which involves some engineering) isn’t represented in the book at all. To anybody looking into this as a graphic designer (hobbyist, student, professional, it doesn’t matter), I can’t recommend it. It’s not disinteresting, but if you are looking for a visual history companion of the field, you’ll likely find far more suitable books elsewhere. This isn’t going to give you much more than you would (or at least should) have gotten from compulsory eduction in terms of graphic design.

It was a present for my son who is studying design and he loved it.

Cadeau pour ma fille qui est en étude d'arts appliqués, est ravie de ce cadeau qui correspond à ses recherches

Libro molto ben costruito con foto eccellenti Ottimo per regalo ad appassionati

Best book I have ever seen on the design of an extraordinarily wide range of works from 1850 to the present! Extraordinary photos, wonderful biographies of key designers, clear and intelligent grouping of works into eras and styles. Awesome diversity, including almost every aspect of items shaping our lives: furniture, lights, appliances, tableware, transportation, decorative pottery, cameras, clocks, fabrics, wallpaper, posters, typewriters, jewelry, radios, coffee/tea kettles, and on and on seemingly endlessly. All are clearly documented by time and designer, with a wonderful separate A to Z compendium of designer biographies at the very end of the book. If you like design of everyday objects, you will love this book.

Rhe book is amazing .. the sheet waulity is great.. talk about designs and designs movements. Not art movements once which were design movements