Do you ever wonder about how a product came to be? Who designed it and why? Behind every product there is a person and behind every person, a story. The IDSA Design History Section is committed to the effort of collecting, compiling and sharing these experiences to inspire the design profession.

We need designers to document their experiences surrounding our profession. This section offers several methods for adding information to our collection. Eventually, we hope to post these records in the Resources section of this site.

The your stories section gives a list of activities to collect archival design information. Also included is a downloadable interview questionnaire to use as a guide for documenting other designer's experiences.

Participation in Design History Section Activities
Donated "classic" products more than 20 years old are welcomed for IDSA headquarters historical display. Products must fit onto a 12-inch deep shelf. Send to "classics" at the address listed below:

Kristina Goodrich
Executive Director, IDSA,
45195 Business Court, Suite 250
Dulles, VA 20166-6717

We are looking for archival organizations that have accessible collections of design history. If you know of such locations that are NOT in our Archives list, you (or they) can provide us with a summary list of their relevant collections for publication on this web site.

*We have seen an article about designer L. Garth Huxtable (1911-1989) that refers to his collection of papers at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie. We would appreciate someone checking this out to see if they have any other industrial design collections, and would list them as an archival source if we had a contact, phone numbers and a list of such collections. Also, we've heard of a design archival source at the San Francisco Airport museum, and would appeciate someone checking it out.