Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World

Designer Brooks Stevens created thousands of ingenious and beautiful designs for industrial and household products - including a clothes dryer with a window in the front, a wide-mouthed peanut butter jar, and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. ( There’s nothing more aerodynamic than a wiener, he explained.) In 1954 he coined the phrase planned obsolescence, defining it as instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary. This book, the first publication to document his work, includes 250 illustrations of designs by Stevens and his firm, many in color, detailed studies of individual designs, interpretive essays, a description of the Brooks Stevens Archive at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and several key writings by Stevens himself.