Chapter 2
The Beginning of Design

The first time humans used tools that were designed was during the Stone Age 2,000,000 to 10,000 years ago. One group of early people called Homo habilis developed a hunting lifestyle using simple stone tools. They used chipped stone tools to hunt animals for food. The superior stone tools allowed them to bring in much more compared to earlier times.
However, the concept of design that we now use daily has its origin in the Industrial Revolution, which happened in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. Beginning with the invention of the spinning machine, the spinning wheel that had been used in homes until then began to transition toward large-scale mass production in factories using steam engines. In the same way, the progress of the agricultural revolution increased food production which allowed for a rise in population and wage workers began to be concentrated in city factories.
Because of this, industrialism made rapid upward progress but the economic differential also expanded.
The factories where workers were employed, and their homes, declined into a bad environment.
Ebenezer Howard, who was concerned by the concentration of factories in London along with the sudden worsening of the environment and expansion of poverty, published To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1898. He built suburbs with populations of tens of thousands, with living and working spaces near each other, and parks and forests placed around the area. It was the appearance of a new community using income from rental housing to develop public facilities. The design of Letchworth to the north of London has a significant effect on city planning even now.
William Morris, who was active around the same time, is the origin of modern design. Morris reconsidered the value of handwork and beauty of products which were lost during the Industrial Revolution, and developed the Arts and Crafts Movement involving accepting the beauty in everyday life.
He strongly espoused Marxism and believed it was necessary to change society to free workers and promote art.
Both Howard and Morris developed socialist thought.
Members of the German Association of Craftsmen which was later associated with Bauhaus, Bruno Taut and Hermann Muthesius, had contact with them and were strongly affected by the Russian Revolution.
They continuously worked hard to ensure that beauty was not only for the upper classes but also offered to the working class.
This was the start of Modern Design, the great idea of continual social improvement.