John Heskett's Industrial Design: An Interview at Middlesex Polytechnic, 1981: Part Two: The Emergence of the Role of the Design and the Designer in the Industrial Economy

Abstract

An edited presentation of an extended interview with the design historian John Heskett undertaken a few months after the publication of Heskett's Industrial Design (Thames and Hudson, 1980). Part One explores the genesis and structure of Industrial Design, as well as wider problems in the writing of histories of design. Part Two examines circumstances and tensions in regard to understanding the roles of design and the designer in the processes of industrialization especially with regard to emerging tensions between “production” and “consumption” and “industry” and “craft” in design historical understanding in the late 1970s/early 1980s.