ABSTRACT
The years leading up to 1914 witnessed the emergence of a new generation of visually trained individuals who applied their skills to the formation of modern images, objects and spaces. Their role was to provide the aesthetic options on the basis of which consumer decisions could be made. In that context, the need to clarify the design process, and the tasks of designers, became increasingly imperative. No single model for designing presented itself, however, and the activity continued to evolve in an ad hoc manner, largely dependent on the way things had happened in the decorative art industries in the past, the new requirements of industrial production and the vagaries of the marketplace. It remained the task of a wide range of diverse individuals – fine artists to teams of anonymous art workers to architects to engineers to craftsmen to decorative artists and a new breed of visualizers referred to as commercial artists – to contribute, in different ways, to the visual face of the everyday modern world. Different areas of production – the traditional decorative arts, new consumer products, fashion items, twodimensional designs of various kinds and interior spaces and environments within the private and the public spheres – embraced design in different ways developing models of practice that suited their industries and their markets. At the same time, art and industry began to develop a strategic alliance with each other, with the aim of creating products, images and spaces that would appeal to the expanding body of consumers and which communicated the required sociocultural messages.
