Jan van Toorn

Here is a brief clip of Jan van Toorn discussing how he got into design. He raises an interesting point that could maybe be explored further, that the Modernists believed that design could and should be used to create a better world but this all got lost in the 50s. I guess this period was when advertising really got big. So was design only used to make things prior to this period ? Did any modernist designers get involved in selling? Or are they all the signees of the FTF Manifesto?

http://vimeo.com/3775122