ABSTRACT
In the first four decades of the twentieth century, one face of modern design was defined by its sociocultural role within the expanding picture of consumption and the newly defined marketplace – an area of modern life that could not be easily rationalized and systematized. Its other important defining context was the more rationally based world of mass manufacturing and technological innovation. In that context, large numbers of standardized goods were produced to meet expanding demand but, because of the high investment costs required, they had to be aggressively sold. Design crossed the technology/culture divide. A process that was intrinsic to mass manufacturing, the results of which communicated sociocultural values, it was embedded equally firmly within the worlds of consumption and production. Arguably, it was one of the few phenomena that linked those two worlds together.2
