"In Chasing the Perfect, designer and writer Natalia Ilyin delivers her astute, incisive, and humorous observations on design and the world it has molded. According to Ilyin, "Modern design is based on deeply idealist notions, and its inherent perfectionism has dovetailed beautifully with our commodity-based economy's need to keep people itching so that they will buy things and keep the society chugging along. I began Chasing the Perfect because I started to become aware of this collusion, this silent pressure that a language of design based in perfectionism had brought to bear on how I developed as a person."" "Chasing the Perfect is especially relevant in our times as interest in graphic, industrial, and architectural design moves more and more into mainstream culture. Each of the ten chapters features Ilyin's accessible and provocative writing, which is highlighted with a broad range of images - some quite unexpected - from the designed world around us."--Jacket.