Read this aloud to my partner. Neither of us are graphic designers so we tended to feel more engaged with the sections describing the historical aspects of design and its relationship to capitalism, all of ancient and contemporary history. Pater does a great job describing the development of design over the centuries, albeit with a heavy western focus, which he himself acknowledges as a deficiency in the introduction.

Excellent historical overview of the interactions between graphic design and capitalism. Pater does a decent job making concepts approachable for folks with less context an preexistin knowledge about anticapitalist theories and history. Stimulated a lot of interesting discussions for my partner and I.

The plentiful references also gave me and my partner plenty of further reading to persue in related areas.

My only frustration with this book were the pervasive editorial errors throughout the text. At the beginning, I started marking them to share with the author (through some unknown means, but the book is CC liensed so I figure some means must be possible), but they were so often that it was becoming frustrating to focus on them while also maintaining a focus on enjoying the books contents with my partner. The mistakes are frustrating but never left me confounded as to the meaning of a phrase, just distracted and stuttering.