Brooks Stevens Design Associates
 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Industrial Design, Engineering, Prototyping, Graphic Design |
| Founded | 1934 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
| Headquarters | Allenton, Wisconsin St. Paul, Minnesota |
Key people | George Konstantakis, President Daniel L. Riley, Douglas E. Maki, Samuel Petre, |
| Products | Product development |
| Website | www.brooksstevens.com |
Brooks Stevens, Inc., formally known as Brooks Stevens Design Associates and Brooks Stevens Design, is a product development firm headquartered in Allenton, Wisconsin. The firm also has an office in St. Paul, Minnesota. Brooks Stevens's services include research, industrial design, engineering, prototyping, project management, and graphic design.
History
Brooks Stevens Design was established by Clifford Brooks Stevens in 1935. In 1954, Brooks Stevens, the founder, popularized the term "planned obsolescence"[1] as a cornerstone to product evolution. The phrase was not intended to refer to building things that deteriorate easily, but to “instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary.”[2][3][4][5] Stevens's philosophies have been said to define the industrial design profession.[6] The firm designed the 1949 Twin Cities Hiawatha and Olympian Hiawatha trains with the "Skytop Lounge". The firm has designed products from toasters to automobiles and heavy equipment.
In 2007, the founder's son, Kipp Stevens, merged Brooks Stevens with Ingenium Product Development, expanding the company's product coverage and engineering capabilities.
Today, Brooks Stevens designs and engineers both consumer-facing and heavy industrial products.
References
- ^ History of Brooks Stevens
- ^ Glenn Adamson. Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped your World. p. 129.
- ^ Wisconsin Historical Society. "Stevens, Brooks, 1911-1995, Industrial Designer"
- ^ Carroll Gantz. Founders of American Industrial Design. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2014,p. 157.
- ^ Babette B. Tischleder and Sarah Wasserman (eds.). Cultures of Obsolescence: History, Materiality, and the Digital Age. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
- ^ Stenquist, Paul (May 13, 2011). "From the Pen of a Giant of Industrial Design". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 March 2012.
Further reading
- Povletich, Bill. "Brooks Stevens: Designing the American Dream". Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 97, no. 1 (Autumn 2013): 38-49.
- Scribbins, Jim (1970). The Hiawatha Story. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Kalmbach Publishing Company. LCCN 70107874. OCLC 91468.