Digital Dreams: The Work of the Sony Design Center

by Paul Kunkel

An in-depth look inside the Sony Design Center, a consortium of about 300 of the top industrial designers from Tokyo to San Francisco to Cologne that are responsible for making Sony into one of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789302624
• ISBN13: 9780789302625
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Universe Publishing(NY)
• Length: 207 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 9.3" x 11.8"

Customer Reviews

Digital Dreams : The Work of the Sony Design Center

Fascinating book that gives a very good insight into the create 'engine' of Sony. A must read for designers and business people alike.

Sony as an inspiration

I am writing this as a sony evangelist, although the cover of the book is diffrent to the one which is shown here. the content of the book is amazing, The dazzling pictures and photography in the book is an eye opener, The book takes about the cluture and the art of the japanese sony designers. How they get their inspiration from stories and from the world around them. An extreammly good showcase of the arts and industrial developnment and design. The book is also rather new tackling subjects on memmory sticks and the newest Sony MD. However the most impressive part of the book was the chapters on the sony playstation and the sony viao subnote book computers. They explain such indept on how the designers used their inspiration and creativity to craft out wonders of high tech art. They also explained how sony tackled the many problems face when designing the playstation. Overall it is the best sony book i have bought. A wonderful inspirtational book filled with creativity which makes you "wow" at sony's design process and designs. "wow"

perfect for right and left brainers

Beautiful photographs and explanatory text help make this book a must buy. But in no way does it sit on my coffee table - it's in my studio, in my home office - inspiring. The tight detail shots of real products to concept products make you wish all man-made objects had this attention to quality. This book is a must for designers because there are words that go with the pictures. They tell a wonderful story - whether you agree with the philosophy or not - it helps explain the design decisions, the strength of the Sony identity and their success. The timeline diagrams and text explaining the business trends of product entry to saturation really is a reflection of someone thinking and analyzing the system - something not really expected in pretty-picture books.I can't believe the excellent price point too - most decent design books gouge you on cost. For those who appreciate beautiful form+function, get it.

A Great Balance of Imagery and Text

This is a rare coffee table type book that you'll want to take the the bedroom or study, or wherever you do your serious reading.You can easily enjoy the book simply for the wonderful images of the ingeniously designed products that Sony has and continues to develop. But what sets this book apart from most in its genre is that it provides the reader with a surprisingly rich context within which to view the design work, not only with regards to industrial design, but also the history of Sony the company.Reading the text, one gains a deeper appreciation for the level of thought put into the design of each and every product throughout its entire lifecycle.Finally, the book also provides a unique look into the future of consumer electronics, at least from the perspective of the leaders at Sony. It's a rare opportunity to see the future as defined by a company which has much to do with the shape of our present.This is definitely a great buy or gift!

Sony Design from top to bottom

I am pleasantly surprised how good this book is.I am impressed by the fact that the book not only covers the basic Industrial Design side of Sony's business, it also devoted a large portion of the book to the 2D design development at Sony. i.e. the Playstation logo development and the over all excellent packing done by Sony in the past, and even some Sony Web design! The book, is also VERY up to date. It even covers the new standard such as the Sony memory sticks and various prototype of memory stick based "walkman -probably the first time Sony have shown these prototype.The text portion of the book, as expected, are interview with various Japanese designer which at times could be boring---most of them talks about "dreams" and "hearts" which are the common theme of Japanese designers. Over all, it is a must have book for al design/gadget freaks...