Marking the 50th anniversary of the Britain Can Make It (BCMI) exhibition, this collection of essays, documents and commentaries is a re-examination of a major design initiative in the immediate post-war period. BCMI encapsulated many of the problems which the newly-founded Council of Industrial Design was to face over the following decades: the tensions between a state-funded body, with its metropolitan bias, and British manufacturing industry located in the industrial regions; persuading the public that "good" modern design had a key role in everyday life; and the manifestation of a particular set of social and cultural values in the selection of exhibits and the means of design propaganda. The book draws on the documentary sources in the Design Council Archive.

The most famous designs of the twentieth century are not those in museums, but in the marketplace - such as the Coca-Cola bottle and the McDonald's logo. Drawing on the most up-to-date scholarship, Jonathan Woodham takes a fresh look at the wider issues of design and industrial culture and explores themes such as national identity, the rise of multi-nationals, Pop and Postmodernism, and contemporary ideas of nostalgia and heritage. In the history which emerges design is clearly seen for what it is: the powerful and complex expression of aesthetic, social, economic, political, and technological forces.