A design classic is an industrially manufactured object with timeless aesthetic value. It serves as a standard of its kind and, despite the year in which it was designed, is still up to date. The collection presented in these three volumes has been put together by a group of experts. The objects are presented chronologically. Glancing through the volumes, the reader will gain an understanding not only of the history of design, but a history of taste and culture. The book is an extraordinary journey through the objects that have shaped our society, from the first attempts to combine function and beauty in the nineteenth century, through the machine aesthetics of the thirties, the advent of plastic and other new materials in the fifties and sixties, up to the classics -to-be of the last ten years.Each product is presented on two, four or six pages and accompanied by a text, written by one of over fifty experts in the field of design. The texts provide a historical context, with key information about the development of the design.