George Nelson: The Design of Modern Design

George Nelson: The Design of Modern Design by Abercrombie, Stanley. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780262511162.

The definitive biography of George Nelson, featuring the full range of his work, interviews, and previously unpublished images from Nelsons private archives. George Nelson (1908-1986) was a pioneering modernist who ranks with Raymond Loewy, Charles Eames, and Eliot Noyes as one of Americas outstanding designers. Nelsons office produced some of the twentieth centurys canonical pieces of industrial design, many of which are still in production: the ball clock, the bubble lamp, the sling sofa. Nelson also made major contributions to the storage wall, the shopping mall, the multi-media presentation, and the open-plan office system. The author of this definitive biography was given access to Nelsons office archives and personal papers. He also interviewed more than 70 of Nelsons friends, colleagues, employees, and clients (including the late D. J. De Pree, former head of the Herman Miller Furniture Company and Nelsons chief patron) and obtained many previously unpublished images from corporate and private archives.The full range of Nelsons work is represented, from product and furniture design to packaging and graphics to large-scale projects such as the Fairchild house and the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow. Because Nelson was a serious and original thinker about design issues, Abercrombie quotes extensively from his published and unpublished writings, offering provocative new material to students of design theory and philosophy. The appendixes, compiled by Judith Nasatir, include a chronology of Nelsons work, a biographical chronology, and two bibliographies: one of writings by Nelson and the other of writings about him.