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001 muse51216
003 MdBmJHUP
005 20161111135857.0
006 m o d
007 cr||||||||nn|n
008 151119s2016 mnu o 00 0 eng d
010 _z 2015037494
020 _a9781452951744
020 _a1452951748
020 _z9780816693405 (hardback)
020 _z9780816693412 (paperback)
035 _a(OCoLC)946725431
040 _aMdBmJHUP
_cMdBmJHUP
043 _an-us---
050 0 0 _aTS140.V37
_bS??????
100 1 _aShapiro, Danielle,??????????
_eauthor.
245 1 0 _aJohn Vassos
_h[electronic resource] :
_bindustrial design for modern life /
_cDanielle Shapiro.
260 _aMinneapolis :
_bUniversity of Minnesota Press,
_c2016.
_e(Baltimore, Md. :
_fProject MUSE,
_g2015)
300 _a1 online resource (pages cm)
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
500 _aBased on the author's dissertation (Ph.D.)--Department of Art History and Communications Studies at McGill University. 2005.
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.
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.
588 _aDescription based on print version record.
600 1 0 _aVassos, John,
_d1898-1985.
650 7 _aARCHITECTURE / Individual Architects & Firms / General.
_2bisacsh
650 7 _aARCHITECTURE / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945).
_2bisacsh
650 0 _aIndustrial design
_zUnited States
_xHistory
_y20th century.
650 0 _aIllustrators
_zUnited States
_vBiography.
650 0 _aIndustrial designers
_zUnited States
_vBiography.
610 2 0 _aRCA Corporation
_xHistory
_y20th century.
655 7 _aElectronic books.
_2local
710 2 _aProject Muse.
830 0 _aUPCC book collections on Project MUSE.
856 4 0 _zFull text available:
_uhttps://muse.jhu.edu/book/45454/
945 _aProject MUSE - UPCC 2016 Complete
945 _aProject MUSE - UPCC 2016 Global Cultural Studies
999 _c1211
_d1211