the place of design in management by the 1980's

THE history of design in manufacture over the last two hundred and fifty years could almost be compressed into three words—integration, disintegration, reintegration—for that broadly has been the sequence of development from the days of handcraftsmanship, through the mechanization of the first industrial revolution, to the present age of swiftly changing technology. In the pre‐industrial era, integration between design and manufacture was complete since the designer and maker were one. In many cases, too, the maker was also the retailer or distributor, selling in his front room what he had made in his back room and knowing his customers as well as he knew himself.