Good Design refers to the aversion to excessive product styling - for the sole purpose of increasing sales - in the years following the Second World War.
The ¨Good Design¨ exhibitions at the New York Museum of Modern Art (1950-1955) that set the standard were a result of a lengthy design reform legacy. William Morris and the British Arts and Crafts Movement were one of the first reformers to encourage simpler, more ¨honest¨ forms. Their aesthetic was later reconciled with new materials, technologies, and abstract forms in the Modern movement. Straightforward, more basic design also flourished in Utility Design during the Second World War under the supervision of the British Board of Trade's Council of Industrial Design.
Like Utility and Modern design, Good Design generally utilized pure forms, unadorned surfaces, a conservative gray-scale palette, and decidedly ¨appropriate¨ materials.