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Taste Today
- 1st Edition
- Author: P. Lloyd Jones
- Language: English
In the affluent economy of the 1990s, consumer culture is becoming increasingly removed from the functionalism of satisfying primary physical needs and moving towards an indulgence… Read more
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In the affluent economy of the 1990s, consumer culture is becoming increasingly removed from the functionalism of satisfying primary physical needs and moving towards an indulgence of 'taste' - the acts and arts of appreciation. Taste Today, the winner of the International Robert Maxwell Prize for New Writing on Design Thinking, aims to redirect the attention of designers, marketeers and consumers to the subjective factors which underlie the choice and purchase of possessions. Combining critical studies from the history of art and design with recent advances in sociological and psychological theory in consumer behaviour, Taste Today provides a unique account of the concept of 'taste' in contemporary consumer society. Over 200 black and white illustrations and 50 colour photographs form a unique visual parallel to the text. An extensive bibliography including approximately 400 notes and references offers a useful source of information on related topics.
For all designers, marketeers, pyschologists, sociologists and anthropologists, and the general reader.
Chapter headings and selected contents: Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgements. What is Taste? Taste yesterday. Discriminating palates and keen eyes. Taste and temperament. Attitudes, beliefs and choices. The pleasures of the table - taste as a metaphor. Goods and Language. Purifying the dialect of the tribe. Structuralism and the world of goods. Good form: Gestalt and the nature of nuance. Product semantics. Metaphor and the importance of context. Irony, sophistication and camp. What is kitsch? Critical Values and Social Behaviour. Beauty and truth. On technique. Restraint - rhetoric and moral values. 'A sprawling, highly ornamental rococo extravagance'. Managing impressions. Taste and the Professionals. Creators and curators. Raising the nation's taste. Artists, intellectuals and the market place. The professionalization of taste. Design as a profession. Educating the taste makers. Ivory towers and real worlds - reward systems in curator professions. Them and Us. Taste cultures and taste publics. Styles and the structure of society. High Art, Big Design and What Sells. Legitimacy, quality and value. Professional ideology and good design. Popular, vernacular and pop. Fashion. Stability and change in symbolic forms. The diffusion of innovation. Fashion and commerce. Innovators, opinion leaders and gatekeepers. The dialectics of display. Fashion cycles. Quality and Equality. Quantification or understanding. Taste engineering. Quality in a democracy - the designer's responsibility. The 'grey area' of aesthetics. Design and the poetry of everyday things. Consumer education and cultural values. Notes and references. Index.
- Language: English
- Edition: 1
- Published:
- Imprint: Pergamon
PL
P. Lloyd Jones
Affiliations and expertise
Head of School of Three-Dimensional Design, Kingston Polytechnic, UK