Since the industrial revolution, when everything ran by clockwork, people have understood how important it is to live in the moment. But over time our world has grown increasingly busy, and we've lost our ability to truly savour each unique experience and the simple pleasures the world has to offer. Cultural commentator and critic Stephen Bayley seeks to explain what real value is: it's about taking the time and making the effort to appreciate things, of understanding the permanent charm of modest daily rituals performed with care and feeling. Of caring about appearances and meaning. Of being bold in matters of taste. Of fully understanding the source of lasting pleasure. Of making every encounter with an object or person meaningful. Value is an elegiac account of what's recently been lost in the digital apocalypse. But also an enthusiastic anticipation of what we can regain in a post-viral, more analogue and more thoughtful world.
Sources are eclectic, results mixed, but one thing is certain: car design is being forced up an ever tightening spiral of creativity. These machines are memorials of our tastes, yearnings and capabilities. They have layers of meaning and can, as Henry Ford knew, be read like a book... if only you know how. The story of the car is the story of how the objects of industry became a medium of artistic expression.This book tells that story in a series of case studies which reveal national characteristics: American flair, German technical suprematism, French vernacular chic, gorgeous Italian sculpture, English antiquarianism, Japanese ingenuity, Swedish responsibility. Cars featured appear in chronological date order from the 1908 Ford Model T to 2003 BMW 5 Series.The chosen cars will be specially photographed in a uniform style and reproduced in very textured, 4 colour b/w so as to distance this book from the cliches and conventions of specialist automotive publishing and to highlight form and shape. Each picture will be accompanied by a short critical essay including essential historical material together with colourful anecdotage and quotations as well as a persuasive aesthetic appraisal of each vehicle. This lavish and beautifully designed book is the gift book for all car enthusiasts and design aficionados.
Cars have a talismanic quality. No other manufactured object has the same disturbing allure. More emotions are involved in cars than any other product: vanity, cupidity, greed, social competitiveness, cultural modelling. But when all this perverse promise ends in catastrophe, these same talismanic qualities acquire an extra dimension. The car crash is a defining phenomenon of popular culture. Death Drive is both an appreciative essay about the historic place of the automobile in the modern imagination and an exploration of the circumstances surrounding multiple celebrity denouements, including Isadora Duncan, Jane Mansfield, James Dean, Jackson Pollack, Princess Grace, and Helmut Newton, among many others. En route the narrative traces one very big arc - the role of the car in extending or creating the personality of a celebrity - and concludes by confronting the imminent death of the car itself. AUTHOR: Stephen Bayley recounts delightfully grotesque tales about celebrities done in by trees, by lampposts, or by nonentities in ancient Chevys. A design masterpiece, this book combines exquisite prose with stylish presentation - the cars are described more lovingly than the people who perished in them. Like a Bugatti, Death Drive recalls a time when books and cars were beautiful. SELLING POINTS: * Albert Camus once remarked that there's "nothing more absurd than to die in a car accident". That was before his car hit a tree at 80mph. Death Drive - a compendium of stories about famous people killed stupidly in cars - oozes absurdity * A Times Book of the Year, 2016 * Big names like James Dean, Jackson Pollack, and Princess Grace are among the victims 72 colour photographs
Nietzsche said all of life is a question of taste. And he was right. But nowadays all of life is also a question of branding. A brand is not something concocted by graphic designers and marketing consultants: it is "the intangible aspects of an intangible thing", as Massimo Vignelli (who re-branded the New York subway) explained. Brand values are the expectations and associations that all successful (and, indeed, unsuccessful) products and services possess. And now they are under threat from Health & Safety. Ugly, generic packaging for cigarettes will soon be mandatory. Bans on attractive presentation for sugar, alcohol and cars will logically follow. Simultaneously, brands are vulnerable as conventional advertising becomes redundant and younger affluent consumers suffer from consumer fatigue. With Signs of Life Stephen Bayley makes the case that far from being pernicious, manipulative voodoo, brands and branding should be regarded as the contemporary equivalent of folk-art
Cites examples in art, architecture, and history to consider whether ugliness is an aesthetic judgment subject to taste, considering whether an object whose appearance is related to something negative can still be considered beautiful.
One of the most unmistakable shapes in the world since its introduction in 1915, the Coca-Cola Contour Bottle is an influential symbol of design, art, and culture. What began as a design brief to create a bottle that could be identified in the dark or lying broken on the ground today is one of the most recognized packages on the planet. Published on the occasion of the bottle's centennial, Kiss the Past Hello is a vibrant collection of images and art celebrating the Coca-Cola Contour Bottle not only as an icon of design but also as a symbol of optimism, happiness, and the shared moments in our lives.
________ ‘Promises to show readers how to think boldly and spark imaginative thought’ (FT) ________ Creativity is a powerful force. It drives innovation, boosts our economy and enables us to fulfil our human potential. But what actually is creativity? Is it overrated? And where exactly do ideas come from in the first place? In this book, design gurus Stephen Bayley and Roger Mavity debunk the myths and common misconceptions that form our current thinking around this complex subject. In showing readers how to think boldly and remain undaunted by challenges, they examine the phenomenon from all sides: not only the creativity of invention and of imagination but also that of perception and of discovery, in order to reveal the truths we often overlook. Ultimately, How to Steal Fire will help you reclaim yourself from the anonymous dreariness of a data-driven culture and spark imaginative thought.
Bayley, the author of books on style, design and taste, tells the Habitat story with his customary polycultural panache . . . [Mavity is] good at conveying the experience of being in a room with Conran' Sunday Times Terence Conran, a visionary and a myopic. A design entrepreneur and imaginative restaurateur, he was a democratising idealist who was also a selfish hedonist. His influence is everywhere in modern Britain from where we live to what we eat. Terence: The Man Who Invented Design is the most definitive, intimate and revelatory biography of this design legend, by two of his closest collaborators, Roger Mavity and Stephen Bayley. Frank, amusing, indiscreet, sharp, rude, respectful and knowing, it tells Terence's story as it evolved, from before Habitat's humble chicken brick to Bibendum's sophisticated poulet de Bresse, via personal successes and corporate calamities, culminating in that peculiar temple to the religion he invented: The Design Museum. It celebrates Terence's genius and immeasurable impact on British life - and ensures his rightful status as national treasure. Terence: The Man Who Invented Design is the most candid, up-close insight into the man and myth.
Design is all around us, it is impossible to avoid. Everything that surrounds us has been designed - from the paperclip and the iPod, to our homes and the way we live. Design: Intelligence Made Visible forms the definitive statement on design for this century. Written by Stephen Bayley, one of the world's best known commentators on modern culture and Terence Conran, one of the world's leading designers and arbiters of taste, this new mini edition pays tribute to the leading names, movements, materials and processes such as furniture, fashion, cars, graphics, products, signs and symbols. The book combines essential facts with authoritative opinions - everything, as the industrial designer Raymond Loewy once said, from a lipstick to a steamship - but brought right up to date.A series of essays begin by introducing how design has its place in modern cultural history including Terence Conran's definition of design. The main section of the book comprises an A-Z of iconic people, products and processes from 20th century to the present day with biographies of leading designers from past and present, as well as corporate histories, product appraisals, and witty accounts of relevant management, cultural and social theories.This is simply the indispensable guide to the contents of the modern world in a pocket-sized format.
The pitch is the absolute essence of modern business. Ideas are the most valuable commodity in the modern economy and it is human skill which develops them. Whether at a sales conference in corporate conference room hell or over lunch at a glamourous restaurant, this title tells you how to handle human transactions.
Many objects are beautiful; and many creations are functional. But only few achieve enduring status. The "Design Classics" series presents such select products that have set standards in form, function and brand communication. Each monograph is a richly illustrated essay and product portrait, from conception to production, from prototype to collectors' item.
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