Design

Of course, for as long as there have been objects they have been designed. Yet design only emerged as a [blank] discipline in the 19th century and its literature and theory is still very much in its infancy. It is curious that despite the increasingly prominent role that self-consciously designed commodities play in our everyday lives and in the way we define ourselves, the literature around the subject is hugely disappointing. In fact, beyond bland coffee-table books, it is barely there at all. Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of Modern Design, a classic Hegelian text treating modernism as the inevitable outcome of a historical process is, despite being first published in 1936 and hopelessly [blank] , still the key text. There have been other books, from quirky Bruno Munari (Design as Art) to deadpan Norman Potter (What is a Designer: Things, Places, Messages), and Deyan Sudjic's 2008 The Language of Things, [blank] attempted a broader examination. Nevertheless there is surprisingly little critique, an almost complete absence of theory and little genuinely popular, compelling writing on the subject.