Brooks Stevens, Inc., also known as Brooks Stevens Design Associates and Brooks Stevens Design, is a product development firm headquartered in

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

. Brooks Stevens's services included

research Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in adva ...

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

prototyping A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and software programming. A prototype is generally used to ...

project management Project management is the process of supervising the work of a Project team, team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project initiation documentation, project documentation, crea ...

, and

graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art that involves creating visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of ...

History

Brooks Stevens Design was established by Clifford Brooks Stevens in 1934. In 1954, Brooks Stevens, the founder, popularized the term "planned obsolescence" 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. Stevens's philosophies have been said to define the industrial design profession. The firm has designed products from toasters to automobiles and heavy equipment, including the 1949 ''

Twin Cities Hiawatha The ''Twin Cities Hiawatha'', often just ''Hiawatha'', was a named passenger train operated by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (also known as the Milwaukee Road), and traveled from Chicago to the Twin Cities. The origina ...

'' and '' Olympian Hiawatha'' trains with " Skytop Lounge" cars. In 2007, the founder's son, Kipp Stevens, retired and sold Brooks Stevens to Ingenium Product Development, expanding the company's product coverage and engineering capabilities. Today, Brooks Stevens designs and engineers both consumer and heavy industrial products.

References

Babette B. Tischleder and Sarah Wasserman (eds.).
Cultures of Obsolescence: History, Materiality, and the Digital Age
'. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

External links

Industrial designer Brooks Stevens examines the effect of WWII on auto design

Brooks Stevens archives
at the

Milwaukee Art Museum The Milwaukee Art Museum (also referred to as MAM) is an art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its collection of over 34,000 works of art and gallery spaces totaling 150,000 sq. ft. (13,900 m²) make it the largest art museum in the state of Wis ...

Old Milwaukee: Brooks Stevens, Wienermobiles, and High Life
from ''Milwaukee Record'' Design companies of the United States Engineering companies of the United States Companies based in Milwaukee

History

References

Further reading

External links