California: Designing Freedom - Softcover

McGuirk, Justin; McGetrick, Brendan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 071487423X ISBN 13: 9780714874234

Publisher: Phaidon Press Ltd, 2017

Synopsis

This book examines California's enormous impact on contemporary design, from the counterculture of the 1960s to the tech culture of Silicon Valley. On a more expansive level, California: Designing Freedom explores the idea that California has pioneered tools of personal liberation - from LSD to surfboards and iPhones. This ambitious survey brings together political posters and portable devices, but also looks beyond hardware to explore how user interface designers in the San Francisco Bay Area are shaping some of our most common daily experiences. Californian products have influenced contemporary life across the globe to such an extent that in some ways we are all now Californians. Put simply, 'Designed in California' is the new 'Made in Italy'.

About this title

About the Author

Justin McGuirk is a writer and curator based in London. He is the chief curator at the Design Museum and the head of Design Curating & Writing at Design Academy Eindhoven. He has been the director of Strelka Press, the design critic of The Guardian, and the editor of Icon magazine. In 2012 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture for an exhibition he curated with Urban Think Tank. His book Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture is published by Verso.

Brendan McGetrick is an independent writer, editor, and designer. His work has appeared in publications in over twenty countries, including Wired, Art Review, Domus, and Vogue Nippon. His projects include the books MAD Dinner (Actar), Urban China: Work In Progress (Timezone 8), and Who is Architecture? (Domus/Timezone 8). In 2011, he curated Unnamed Design, a component of the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale, in collaboration with Ai Weiwei. In 2014, he co-curated Fair Enough in the Russian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. From 2002 to 2006 he was head writer at the research studio AMO.

From the Back Cover

Our lives, homes, and work are, whether we
realize it or not, being designed in California.
Our day-to-day experiences are increasingly
filtered through social media interfaces, and
the Internet of Things is nearly a reality. This
important book assesses California's potent
influence on today's design culture and traces
its evolution, from the influence of The Whole
Earth Catalog in the 1960s to the emergence
of the Silicon Valley tech giants that are now
having a massive influence on contemporary
life around the world.

Edition details

• Publisher: Phaidon Press Ltd
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 071487423X
• ISBN 13: 9780714874234
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240