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Title: The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness by Virginia Postrel ISBN: 0-06-018632-1 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (22 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Get in front of marketplace change with this book
Comment: Virginia Postrel, ex-editor of Reason Magazine and a columnist at the New York Times, has been writing prescient, well-researched analysis for years now. Her penetrating book "The Future and its Enemies", with its powerful recasting of the political landscape from Left and Right into "stasists" versus "dynamists" now has a worthy successor in "The Substance of Style". (Simply put, politics is really about people who oppose change versus those who embrace it.)
I was particularly struck by its observations of incremental improvements in manufacturing and increases in trade that, taken together, are having a revolutionary impact in the marketplace (for example, how India and China have driven down the cost of natural stone, or how businesses have learned to tailor their manufacturing to fit narrower and narrower market niches). In particular, I was blown away at how everything has changed since the EIGHTIES.
I don't think this message gets out enough. People are too busy shopping to understand or care about the plenty being stocked in front of them, and the non-economically minded (like anti-globalization leftists etc.) discount or ignore it entirely. None of us have perspective (until it shows up in textbooks a decade or so from now).
If they are not being won over already, I see a growing market for Postrel's ideas in "non-political" business majors and entrepreneurs who are typically concerned only with micro-level details and don't have a refined political philosophy. If anything, dynamism is an excellent strategy for understanding and winning in the marketplace. Postrel shows that political ideas about free markets and how our society is organized are directly connected to the very nature of the products we enjoy -- a wake-up call to business people who have stepped back from politics in disgust.
I really enjoyed the book. It's written well, has tons of evidence to support the views it holds, and didn't waste my time. I recommend it unreservedly.
Rating: 4
Summary: Simple points made well
Comment: Never before have humans mastered production and distribution so well that function and value become givens, making aesthetics the ground of marginal competition. Design, therefore, has real and substantive, if hard to measure, economic value. These are the two points that Virginia Postrel makes in The Substance of Style. It takes her 191 pages to do so, however, and this distresses some who feel that these obvious points could have been made in two sentences.
I came to this book with the same trepidation because I didn't particularly care for Postrel's last book, The Future and its Enemies. But, I ended up a convert. Sure, Postrel's thesis here is a simple one, but this only underscores its elegance. That we all demand ambiance with our coffee and a flourish with our door knobs is something many folks take for granted. But the thing is, it's an unprecedented change in the history of human consumption and I don't know of anyone who has catalogued it like Postrel has. That profitability and business survival increasingly depend on the intangible "feel" of a product or service--and not on its traditional utility--will still come as a surprise to many old-school thinkers.
What Postrel does in this book is engagingly prove her two points beyond a doubt. Sure, they're simple points, but the book is short and packed with interesting anecdotes. I recommend this book to anyone interested in design, but especially to folks who think there's no value in looks or those who might be tempted to fault our modern "consumerist" culture as wasteful.
Rating: 1
Summary: Postrel just wants your money
Comment: I saw Virginia Postrel speak recently at Rhode Island School of Design, and it was clear that she knew nothing about aesthetics. Starbucks, Walmart, all of the "case studies" she cited have everything to do with consumerism, mass production and savvy marketing and nothing to do with aesthetics or the inherent value of design.
At the beginning of her speech, Postrel apologed for the awful design of her powerpoint presentation and admitted that she was not a designer and had no background in design criticism. What she fills her book with are endless ridiculous and unfounded observations like the assertion that America has a higher design consciousness than Europe, and that Houston, TX is a metropolitan city that can be compared to Paris on the basis of style.
It is clear that Postrel has not a clue what the definition of aesthetics even is, but knows that if she fills the subtitle of her books with enough buzzwords she will sell millions. If you want to read about design aesthetics from someone who knows what he is talking about, you'd be much better off reading "How to Design" by George Nelson. Or get some actual design criticism in I.D. magazine every month. Don't buy into Postrel's BS. Even the cover of her book is badly designed! So much for promoting "aesthetics" and "style."
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Title: The FUTURE AND ITS ENEMIES: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress by Virginia Postrel ISBN: 0684862697 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 08 December, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Trading Up: The New American Luxury by Michael Silverstein, Neil Fiske ISBN: 1591840139 Publisher: Portfolio Pub. Date: 09 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman ISBN: 0465051359 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 23 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life by Richard Florida ISBN: 0465024769 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 30 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market by Gerald Zaltman ISBN: 1578518261 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 21 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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