Design and Popular Entertainment

This book offers a selection of nine essays that examine the range of design for popular entertainment, from theatre and film, to television and radio. Investigating entertainment design from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s, the book is divided into two sections. The first addresses the ‘hardware’ of popular entertainment, in other words the objects through which images, sound and performance are transmitted. The second explores the construction of cinematic and televisual imagery and the design of objects for the screen, the ‘software’ of entertainment. In so doing it offers important insights into this little explored aspect of design.

Topics covered by the collection include the design of theatrical lighting and stage sets, cinema and radio design, the representation of designers within film, and the relationship between design and television. The book’s concentration on the 1950s and 1960s reflects the profound changes in modes of entertainment that took place during that period, in particular the spread of television, which not only attracted a huge popular audience but also stimulated experimental designing approaches and thinking. With particular focus on the way that both the objects and the construction of entertainment have altered audience’s experience, the essays present a novel approach to the subject. This book will be of particular interest to students and teachers working in design and cultural history as well as film and theatre studies.