- James Dyson: "Design historians Charlotte and Peter Fiell take a journey through the earliest forms of design. Through dynamic illustrations, this history of design stretches over the centuries." source ↗
A 512-page survey of design history from the Paleolithic to the present, covering furniture, graphics, product design, and architecture through the objects that defined each era. The Fiells organise the narrative by period and geography, tracing how design responded to materials, manufacturing, and social change.
Dyson named this among his ten desert-island books because the Fiells' narrative is about people who made things better through relentless iteration, not about geniuses who had visions. Every object in the book reached its final form through the same cycle of frustration, prototype, and improvement that Dyson codified at his own company. For a product founder, reading it is like studying the family tree of your own profession — you see where the lineage of improvement came from and where you fit in it.