Designing the Final Frontier preview

Out this August is a gloriously geeky Star Trek book that will appeal to a very special blob of people in a venn diagram of Star Trek fans and those with an interest in design history! Coming from publisher Weldon Owen and author and design expert Daniel Chavkin is Star Trek: Designing the Final Frontier - How Midcentury Modernism Shaped Our View of the Future(ad).

Simon and Schuster, who are distributing the book, have now released a new cover (still marked as not final in their Digital Catalog), which also lists Brian McGuire as an author or contributor. They've also released a few preview pages. Continue below to check them out.

Here's a reminder of the blurb:

Celebrate Star Trek: The Original Series and the show’s distinctive Mid-Century modern design that would change design– and television– forever. 

Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969) was the first installment of one of the most successful and longest-running television franchises of all time. Today, “Trekkers” champion its writing, progressive social consciousness, and aesthetic. Designing the Final Frontier is a unique, expert look at the mid-century modern design that created and inspired that aesthetic. From Eames chairs to amorphous sculptures, from bright colors to futuristic frames, Star Trek: TOS is bursting with mid-century modern furniture, art, and design elements—many of them bought directly from famous design showrooms.

Author and mid-century modern design expert Dan Chavkin has created an insider’s guide to the interior of original starship Enterprise and beyond, that is sure to attract Star Trek’s thriving global fan base.

The preview pages include the contents page, revealing the book is largely split into episode-specific chapters, with a few thematic chapters sprinkled throughout, including looking at the bridge, architecture, sets, props, fashion, brutalism, and advertising.

These few pages are a bit of a tease, but this sounds like a fascinating book to me, and something very unique for Star Trek, framing the franchise specifically through the lens of design. You might get some further idea of what to expect from Chavkin's other books, also on mid-century design: Unseen Midcentury Desert Modern(ad) and Hand-in-Hand: Ceramics, Mosaics, Tapestries, and Wood Carvings by the California Mid-Century Designers Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman(ad).

Star Trek: Designing the Final Frontier is due out in August, and you can pre-order it at places including Amazon(ad), Book Depository(ad), and Bookshop(ad).

For more Star Trek books updates, check back through my books tag for all the latest coverage, or click the books button on my 2021 schedule page to see the run down for the year.