ABSTRACT
This third edition of this book is a revised and updated version of the 2004 edition, itself an almost completely rewritten version of the original text I wrote back in the early 1980s, entitled An Introduction to Design and Culture in the Twentieth Century. Sitting down to rewrite the second edition, I had initially set out with the idea that I would simply add some new sections to accommodate the events of the intervening years. Very swiftly, however, I had realized that that was not going to be possible. Not only had many more things happened in the world of design since the 1980s, my perspective on the subject had also been utterly transformed by the vast amount of theoretical literature that had emerged since then. While the broad themes which directed the earlier text remained valid, something very substantial had happened in the intervening years, which meant that, if the new text was going to constitute a valid contribution from the perspective of the early twenty-first century, a much more radical overhaul was going to be needed.
