This important study introduces the key theories of national identity, and relates them to the broad fields of product, graphic and fashion design. Javier Gimeno-Martinez approaches the inter-relationship between national identity and cultural production from two perspectives: the distinctive characteristics of a nation's output, and the consumption of design products within a country as a means of generating a national design landscape. Using case studies ranging from stamps in nineteenth century Russian-occupied Finland, to Coca-Cola as an 'American' drink in modern Trinidad and Tobago, he addresses concepts of essentialism, constructivism, geography and multiculturality, and considers the works of key theorists, including Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm and Doreen Massey. This illuminating book offers the first comprehensive account of how national identity and cultural policy have shaped design, while suggesting that traditional formations of the 'national' are increasingly unsustainable in an age of globalisation, migration and cultural diversity. Javier Gimeno-Martinez is Lecturer in Design Cultures at the VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The first edition of Architecture, Power, and National Identity, published in 1992, has become a classic, winning the prestigious Spiro Kostof award for the best book in architecture and urbanism. Lawrence Vale fully has fully updated the book, which focuses on the relationship between the design of national capitals across the world and the formation of national identity in modernity. Tied to this, it explains the role that architecture and planning play in the forceful assertion of state power. The book is truly international in scope, looking at capital cities in the United States, India, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Bangladesh, and Papua New Guinea.

From consumer products to architecture to advertising to digital technology, design is an undeniably global phenomenon. Yet despite their professed transnational perspective, historical studies of design have all too often succumbed to a bias toward Western, industrialized nations. This diverse but rigorously curated collection recalibrates our understanding of design history, reassessing regional and national cultures while situating them within an international context. Here, contributors from five continents offer nuanced studies that range from South Africa to the Czech Republic, all the while sensitive to the complexities of local variation and the role of nation-states in identity construction.

Design and Heritage provides the first extended study of heritage from the point of view of design history. Exploring the material objects and spaces that contribute to our experience of heritage, the volume also examines the processes and practices that shape them. Bringing together 18 case studies, written by authors from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Norway, India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, the book questions how design functions to produce heritage. Including provocative case studies of objects that reinterpret visual symbols of cultural identity and buildings and monuments that evoke feelings of national pride and historical memory, as well as landscapes embedded with trauma, contributors consider how we can work to develop adequate shared conceptual models of heritage and apply them to design and its histories. Exploring the distinction between tangible and intangible heritages, the chapters consider what these categories mean for design history and heritage. Finally, the book questions whether it might be possible to promote a truly equitable understanding of heritage that illuminates the social, cultural and economic roles of design. Design and Heritage demonstrates that design historical methods of inquiry contribute significantly to critical heritage studies. Academics, researchers and students engaged in the study of heritage, design history, material culture, folklore, art history, architectural history and social and cultural history will find much to interest them within the pages of the book.

National symbols, modern totems with ancient roots, remain entities for which men and women continue to march, debate, fight, and die. Modern political leaders still drape their campaigns in such symbols; modern revolutionaries still defile them. Identity Designs explores the source of this long-standing power--the way national symbols are selected, the manner in which their meaning is conveyed, their potential effects, and the sustenance of their power. In particular, the book charts the role of design in the selection of symbolic images, thus demonstrating that symbols are chosen not just for what they convey, but how they convey their message. Karen Cerulo shows that the symbolic designs of a nation's identity are not simply the products of indigenous characteristics, as conventional wisdom might suggest. Rather, the banners and songs by which nations represent themselves are generated by broad social forces that transcend the peculiarities of any one nation. Cerulo's analysis acquaints readers with a set of social structural factors that delimit rules of symbolic expression. Further, the book suggests the benefits of adhering to these rules and explores the costs of violating them.

Blackletter type, also known as Fraktur or German Gothic, originated with Gutenberg's moveable type, and was based on the contemporary calligraphy of that time. From the sixteenth century on, it shared the spotlight with roman type in German-speaking countries and was even adopted for the printing of Martin Luther's writings. Yet by the twentieth century it was increasingly spurned by both commercial artists, who embraced roman type for its classical associations, and modernist designers, who championed sanserif type for its universal and democratic qualities. At the close of the Second World War, the identification of blackletter with failed Nazi ideology was inescapable, thus effectively ending the four-hundred-year tradition of blackletter as a distinctive national script. The essays in "Blackletter" investigate the rise and fall of blackletter type, examining its uses and cultural significance at various points throughout history, including the Reformation, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, and the post-Berlin Wall period. This title, illustrated with numerous color examples of blackletter typefaces and their implementation, is a necessity for anyone interested in the history of type.

This beautiful book presents a fascinating array of complete women's and girls' outfits dating from the 1830s to the present, including dresses, shawls, shoes, belts, bags, fans, and hair accessories. Also included is historical and contemporary background information on Native life and Native women and their dress. To accompany a major exhibit of the same name at the NMAI in March 2007.