Product Design and Consumer Culture

Fantastic Plastic shows how product design has developed and considers its usability, technology and appearance. The history of plastics is in so many ways the history of contemporary industrial design and the book provides a fascinating look at how designs using plastics can be considered as works of art, as well as objects of our everyday lives. Fantastic Plastic provides a comprehensive survey of the ecological, technological and aesthetic qualities of plastic and considers the future of the material that has made such a mark on contemporary life.

Plastics have been the defining material of the twentieth century. From the first man-made plastics in 1862 to the patenting of Celluloid in 1870, plastics originally provided an attractive replacement for ivory, tortoiseshell and bone. In Fantastic Plastic contemporary designers, artists and scientists explore the evolution of this ubiquitous and endlessly malleable material, through its trademarked names--Spandex, Teflon, Nylon, Rayon, Tupperware--through to looking at how its function and reputation have changed over its lifetime. Plastics have been used in the manufacture of everything from toys, to furniture, to clothes and has played its part in the creation of contemporary design icons from the ipod to the Tom Vac chair.