ABSTRACT
The modern industrial designer has both a technical and a cultural background and a sense of the public into the bargain and it is these three things which qualify him to perform his job of creating sales. The decorative arts industries, which had targeted elite markets, had long used fine artists to make their products look appealing. The German architect-designer, Peter Behrens, went further than most of his contemporaries in applying his creative skills to the products of the new industries. If design was to be the harmonising force between a society that wanted to express itself through taste and a manufacturing industry that aspired to rationality and efficiency, designers needed to be educated to undertake that subtle bridging task. The concept of the consultant designer for industry came of age in the twentieth century in the USA, in the years between the two world wars.
