Industrial Design

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Image features two people, one laughing, who sit in front of red typewriter. Please scroll down to read the text related to this image.
Behind the Scenes of Bob Greenberg Selects
The founder, chairman, and CEO of R/GA, a worldwide digital advertising agency, product and service innovator, and consultancy. Bob Greenberg is the 16th guest curator in Cooper Hewitt’s Selects series, in which prominent influencers, designers, and artists are invited to mine and interpret the museum’s collection of more than 210,000 objects. The R/GA team made three videos...
Image features iron with clear glass housing encasing blue emulsion-covered body, with glass handle and metal sole plate; plastic and metal control knob below handle; power cord at rear. Please scroll down read more about this object.
Iron, Meet Glass
To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color (May 11, 2018-January 13, 2019), Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. This post was originally published on July 26, 2015. The postwar design era focused largely on improving all aspects of life at home for those who had...
Image features telephone comprising wedge-shaped black plastic body, the front with clear circular rotary dial with finger holes and surrounded by white numerals and letters; handset with earpiece at one end and speaker at other, set in cradle at top rear of telephone body; coiled black plastic-covered cord connects handset to body. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Before There Were Ringtones There Were Rings
In celebration of our new exhibition, The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, this Object of the Day post explores the multisensory experience of an object in Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection. Today’s blog post was written by Cynthia Trope and originally published on March 7, 2013. If you grew up in America in the mid-1950s – 1980s, you no doubt...
Image features an off-white rectangular speaker, the front with two rows of vertical slits; left and right sides faced with square, blond wood panels. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
“Less, but better”
In celebration of our new exhibition The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, this Object of the Day post explores the multisensory experience of an object in Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection. Dieter Rams, Chief Design Officer for German consumer products manufacturer Braun AG from 1961-95, designed the neutral and unassuming L1 speaker in 1957. Influenced by Braun’s...
Image features eyeglass-like wearable technology with titanium frame that is a plain band on the left side and on the right side holds a clip-on camera, computer, battery, and speaker. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
O.K. Glass…
In celebration of Women’s History Month, March Object of the Day posts highlight women designers in the collection. When Isabelle Olsson, head of Industrial Design for Wearables, arrived at Google she was given the brief to make the existing clunky Google Glass prototype (a cellphone’s motherboard, a battery, and a Pico projector all taped to...
Belle Kogan: Designing a Place for Women in the Field of Industrial Design
In celebration of Women’s History Month, March Object of the Day posts highlight women designers in the collection. Today’s blog post was written by Andrea Osgood and originally published March 31, 2014. In the late 1920s, industrial design began to emerge as a viable field in the United States.  Because of the Great Depression, there...
Circuar hanging scale with white outer circle with increments in ponds around outer edge. Yellow center with Braun logo. Wire hook at top and wire arm with foam semi-circle end at bottom. Please scroll down for a blog post about this object.
Pleasing the Eye and the Ear
As the head of design at Braun, a German consumer goods manufacturer, from 1961 to 1995, Dieter Rams created a myriad of products—from calculators to fans to watches–which are now considered hallmarks of 20th century industrial design. Many of these objects are currently on display in Bob Greenberg Selects at Cooper Hewitt until September 9, 2018....
A New World of Color
These HLD 4 No. 4414 hair dryers announce a new design idiom for the hair dryer with their rounded rectangular shape and bold colors. On the hair dryer’s front face there is a bisected slotted grill. Two central rows of slits correspond to the placement of a black rocker switch, which is easily operated with...
The Brick
We’ve come so far technologically that cell phones are now in museums. And in a museum is likely the only place most people will have seen this model – the world’s first commercially available handheld cellular phone. When it came out, it weighed 2.5 pounds, required ten hours for charging for 35 minutes of talk...