Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change

Papanek's polemical argument that most industrial design is trivial, wasteful and irresponsible, and that designers have an obligation to work on the problems that matter — disability, poverty, sustainability, the developing world — rather than on the problems that pay. The book was banned by the Industrial Designers Society of America on publication, which is its own recommendation. For product direction the argument is a useful ethical provocation: what proportion of the industry's talent is working on problems worth solving? Papanek's answer is uncomfortable and has not improved since 1971. Read alongside Morris's Useful Work versus Useless Toil, Illich's Tools for Conviviality, and Munari for a more gentle version of the same sensibility. The most radical design book on the shelf.