Design Culture Now: The National Design Triennial [Paperback]

Donald Albrecht (Author), Ellen Lupton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2000

This is the first-ever survey of American design that cuts across the four disciplines of architecture, product design, graphic design, and new media. Put together by the National Design Museum surveys the up-to-the-minute trends in American design from architecture to product and graphic design to new media. This comprehensive survey catalogs the best in architecture, interiors, environments, landscapes, products, furniture, fashion, objects, typefaces, posters, publications, film and TV graphics, and interactive media from the last three years.

Organized around a series of themes—Branded, Fluid, Local, Minimal, Narrative, Physical, Reclaimed, and Unbelievable—Design Culture Now presents projects from over 75 designers, ranging from new names to current work by established figures. Some of the people whose work is represented include graphic designers Bruce Mau and Stefan Sagemeister, style guru Martha Stewart, product designers Jonathan Ive (Apple Computer) and Tinker Hatfield (Nike), product designers Robert Egger and Moss, film set designer Dante Feretti, The Lion King director and costume, puppet, and set designer Julie Taymor, architects Neil Denari and Frank Gehry, and digital special effects designers Pixar, Digital Domain, and Industrial Light and Magic.

This exhaustive survey contains hundreds of full-color images and a groovy design by Ellen Lupton, designer of Mixing Messages.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Groovy catalogue" -- Architecture Magazine, April 2000

About the Author

Donald Albrecht is the Cooper Hewitt s Curator for Special Projects.

Ellen Lupton is one of America's preeminent design educators. Her books include Skin , Inside Design Now , and Mixing Messages , among others. She is currently director of the design program at Maryland Institute of Art and Design.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (March 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568982186
• ISBN-13: 978-1568982182
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,608,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars could have been SO much better, April 16, 2000

By 

Joseph Flaherty "Read more: www.replicatorinc... (Watertown, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Design Culture Now: The National Design Triennial (Paperback)

Design Culture Now is the title for the catalog of the National Design Triennial(an exhibit of the best product,graphic,and architectural design done in the last three years). It's a nice title, but I'm not completely sure how accurate it is. The book contains a lot of nice pictures of designs and some decent writing about it. However I'm left wondering is this what design culture is? My feeling is that this a collection of the best stuff that has been in magazines about design for the last three years or the culture around designers not the designs that influence culture at large. The saddest part about this book is its unrealized potential. The concept is a decent one. Curators from the three fields of design looked far and wide for the best design in the country created in the last three years. They then met and instead of categorizing by building, product, or graphic they devised seven categories that served as umbrella themes in design (fluid, physical, minimal, reclaimed, local, branded, narrative, unbelievable.) The result is interesting. In the FLUID category an iMac is a page away from a rollercoaster in PHYSICAL a redesign of a shopping cart is grouped with a poster where a man has scarred his body to advertise a lecture. The juxtapostions are interesting but do not save the book. Too much of the work resides in the avant-garde, unseen by most people even fellow designers in many cases. A good example is the work of Martin Venezky (in the PHYSICAL category) a designer who alters the characteristics of letterforms by cutting and distorting them, while the work is interesting enough is it a profound influence on design culture? More likely it is work influenced heavily by grungy graphics. Similar things happen throughout the book where novel objects are elevated to undeserved levels. Another flaw is the attribution of design movements or the lack of criticim for being derivitive of the design movements. Hailing Razorfish as the creators of great internet sights is ok but the book makes it seem as if they are responsible for the idea of E-commerce sights, a better solution may have been to list E-commerce as a topic giving credit to the multitude of companies that have had a hand in developing this amazing revoluton in web design. Conversely, the fluid category is filled with iMac knock-offs which is ok but it should have made it clear that these things were obviously influenced by Apple's ID team. The book design also left something to be desired. Ellen Lupton designed the interior(she was also the curator responsible for graphics) and I was thoroughly let down. I am huge fan of her book Design/Writing/Research a monument in design criticism and book design in general. This book however is the polar opposite. The day-glo inks are the most noticeable flaw, giving me headaches while I tried to read the essays. other than that the layouts are just mediocre. It feels like every other design collection you have seen, which is ok but considering her scary talent it could have been much better. Overall I give it three stars, The project had good intentions, It broke traditional categories, included things not traditionally associated with design(roller-coasters, comic books, etc.), and tried to show a cross pollinated view of design. However I hope the next installment equally favors vernacular design along with the avant garde and provides more critical insight into who made the biggest waves and who merely latched on.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars You CAN judge a book by it's cover!, October 10, 2000

By 

Diana Baldwin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Design Culture Now: The National Design Triennial (Paperback)

Almost annoying.

I agree about the fluorescent pages. I was really, really surprised that anyone would actually box large clumps of body copy (which by the way were written by someone who exists on a much higher plane of existence that the rest of us!) in to heavy fluorescent frames, which basically served to give me the worst headache I've had in weeks.

I was relieved though, that there was some redeeming content in the book. I appreciated the attention to various art disciplines, however, I would (as a graphic designer), have appreciated a LITTLE more attention to print projects.

I agree that it is perhaps, mis-titled, as I wonder if it truly represents "design culture," but there is much to inspire, and I found it worth having.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars spell-check now!, October 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Design Culture Now: The National Design Triennial (Paperback)

I agree completely with the reviewer from Providence, RI. However, I place the day-glo inks as the SECOND most noticeable flaw. The first is the misspelling of SMITHSONIAN on the spine.