Overview

Norman Bel Geddes has long been considered the ‘founder’ of American industrial design. During his long career he worked on everything from theatre design, world fairs and cars to houses and product and packaging design. Nicolas P. Maffei’s magisterial biography draws on original material from the archive at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, and places Bel Geddes’ work within the fast-changing cultural and intellectual contexts of his time. Maffei shows how Bel Geddes’ futuristic but pragmatic style – his notion of ‘practical vision’ – was central to his work, and highly influential on the professional practice of American industrial design in general.

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9781474284615

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Maffei's impressive, revealing biography grounds Bel Geddes's contributions to graphic arts, theater, product design, urbanism, and social engineering in undercurrents of mystical theosophy, positive thinking, socialism, evolutionism, and utopian science fiction-yielding a popular therapeutic modernism for the consumer age. * Jeffrey L. Meikle, Stiles Professor in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, USA * Maffei's impressive portrait of industrial designer, Norman Bel Geddes, shows us how this `practical visionary' envisaged a thoroughgoing re-design of the modern material environment, transforming as he did the appearance of stage sets, automobiles, airplanes, exhibitions, architectural structures and brand identities. * Penny Sparke, Pro Vice Chancellor at Kingston University, UK *

Maffei's impressive, revealing biography grounds Bel Geddes's contributions to graphic arts, theater, product design, urbanism, and social engineering in undercurrents of mystical theosophy, positive thinking, socialism, evolutionism, and utopian science fiction-yielding a popular therapeutic modernism for the consumer age. * Jeffrey L. Meikle, Stiles Professor in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, USA * Maffei's impressive portrait of industrial designer, Norman Bel Geddes, shows us how this `practical visionary' envisaged a thoroughgoing re-design of the modern material environment, transforming as he did the appearance of stage sets, automobiles, airplanes, exhibitions, architectural structures and brand identities. * Penny Sparke, Pro Vice Chancellor at Kingston University, UK * Maffei is one of a new generation of design historians bringing new research and fresh insights to the table. His original and insightful archival research underpins his valuable contribution to our deeper understanding of Bel Geddes' work and thought. * Jonathan M. Woodham, Emeritus Professor of Design History at the University of Brighton, UK * Nic Maffei's in-depth cultural biography of Norman Bel Geddes casts the designer as a `pragmatic visionary'. Grounded in painstaking archival research and a wide historical context, this important study traces the designer's path from early avant-garde theatre design in Europe to leading industrial designer who shaped the face of modern America. It promises to become a standard reference for this key figure in design history. * Jeremy Aynsley, Professor of Design History at the University of Brighton, UK *

Author Information

Nicolas P. Maffei is Senior Lecturer in Contextual Studies in the School of Design, Norwich University of the Arts, UK. He has published widely on American design, streamlining, art deco and modernism.

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