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001			2015037494
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008			151119s2016 mnu b s001 0beng
010			_a 2015037494
020			_a9780816693405 (hardback)
020			_a9780816693412 (paperback)
042			_apcc
043			_an-us---
040			_aDLC _beng _erda _cDLC _dMvI
050	0	0	_aTS140.V37 _bS53 2016
082	0	0	_a745.2092 _aB _223
084			_aARC005070 _aARC006000 _2bisacsh
100	1		_aShapiro, Danielle, _d1968-
245	1	0	_aJohn Vassos : _bindustrial design for modern life / _cDanielle Shapiro.
246	3	0	_aIndustrial design for modern life
263			_a1603
264		1	_aMinneapolis : _bUniversity of Minnesota Press, _c2016.
300			_apages cm
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent
337			_aunmediated _bn _2rdamedia
338			_avolume _bnc _2rdacarrier
500			_aBased on the author's dissertation (Ph. D.)--Department of Art History and Communications Studies at McGill University. 2005.
520			_a"What should a television look like? How should a dial on a radio feel to the touch? These were questions John Vassos asked when the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) asked him to design the first mass-produced television receiver, the TRK-12, which had its spectacular premier at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Vassos emigrated from Greece and arrived in the United States in 1919. His career spans the evolution of central forms of mass media in the twentieth century and offers a template for understanding their success. This is Vassos's legacy--shaping the way we interact with our media technologies. Other industrial designers may be more celebrated, but none were more focused on making radio and television attractive and accessible to millions of Americans.In John Vassos: Industrial Design for Modern Life, Danielle Shapiro is the first to examine the life and work of RCA's key consultant designer through the rise of radio and television and into the computer era. Vassos conceived a vision for the look of new technologies still with us today. A founder of the Industrial Designers Society of America, he was instrumental in the development of a self-conscious industrial design profession during the late 1920s and 1930s and into the postwar period. Drawing on unpublished records and correspondence, Shapiro creates a portrait of a designer whose early artistic work in books like Phobia and Contempo critiqued the commercialization of modern life but whose later design work sought to accommodate it.Replete with rich behind-the-product stories of America's design culture in the 1930s through the 1950s, this volume also chronicles the emergence of what was to become the nation's largest media company and provides a fascinating glimpse into its early corporate culture. In our current era of watching TV on an iPod or a smartphone, Shapiro stimulates broad discussions of the meaning of technological design for mass media in daily life. "-- _cProvided by publisher.
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505	8		_aMachine generated contents note: Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Creating Design We Can Live With -- 1. Drawing Modernity: Advertising and Book Illustrations -- 2. Becoming an Industrial Designer -- 3. Modernizing the Home through Radio -- 4. Designed for Electricity: Vassos's Architectural Interiors -- 5. Vassos and RCA: Money, Media, and Modernism -- 6. The TRK-12: RCA's First Mass-Marketed Television Receiver -- 7. John Vassos in Postwar America -- Conclusion: The Legacy of John Vassos -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index.
600	1	0	_aVassos, John, _d1898-1985.
650		0	_aIndustrial designers _zUnited States _vBiography.
650		0	_aIllustrators _zUnited States _vBiography.
650		0	_aIndustrial design _zUnited States _xHistory _y20th century.
610	2	0	_aRCA Corporation _xHistory _y20th century.
650		7	_aARCHITECTURE / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945). _2bisacsh
650		7	_aARCHITECTURE / Individual Architects & Firms / General. _2bisacsh
948			_au620917
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