World Design: The Best in Classic and Contemporary Furniture, Fashion, Graphics, and More

This A-Z encyclopedia of contemporary furniture, fashion and graphics designs provides an engrossing survey featuring over a thousand color photos of the works of the finest modern designers. From discussions of individual contributions to wider-ranging surveys of styles, movements and innovations, World Design packs in details about the changing, evolving world and styles of designers.

In my view, World Design is a rather subjective title to the book when most of the items discussed here are from Western countries, mainly powerhouse countries such as Italy, France, UK, Germany. Most of the modern classics are in here & most of the daily items that we have taken for granted are here too. Again, designers that are chosen to be included in this encyclopedia is subjective considering that there are other designers that failed to be mentioned such as the highly acclaimed late John Britten, a New Zealander who has designed & built an organic shaped motorbike using carbon fibre with many technological advances. What about the designers who designed the Jaguar E Type, Lotus Elise which uses the aluminium spaceframe which saves the weight of the car & not compromising the safety of the passengers, Benz SLK with its ability to be transformed from a convertible to a coupe in a matter of second, & what about Karem Rashid whose salt & pepper shakers have been rendered as a classics since? The list could go on but having said that, this book manages to inform the readers of those committed designers that designed items for the people, by the people. This book is by no mean a definite book for design because as we speak, more new designer pieces are coming to the market place, and designer pieces being evolved to meet the changes of our requirements.

The format of the book (length of descriptions and size of pictures) was well suited to the presentation of these beautiful yet sometimes familiar works of design. There was a focus on environmental and industrial products. I would have loved to view more examples of graphic art, but they did cover the important figures in that category such as David Carson and Paul Rand.