Tube Map, 1933 (detail). Design: Harry Beck. London’s Transport Museum. © Transport for London.

Helen Barrett took a break from her drawing board to check out Designing Modern Life, on show at the Design Museum until November 27 2005.

In 1916 Frank Pick, visionary chief executive of the London Passenger Transport Board, told an audience of industrial designers that: "The test of the goodness of a thing is its fitness for use. If it fails on this first test, no amount of ornamentation or finish will make it better; it will only become more expensive and more foolish."

Pick should know. In 1931 he was charged with the task of commissioning that benchmark of graphic design excellence, the first London Underground map.

Now, 60 years later, today’s commuters and tourists still make sense of the city’s jumbled railway system with the clear, multicoloured diagram.

A new exhibition at the Design Museum attempts to explain how a handful of design pioneers, like Pick, defined modern life by transforming the way we work, rest and play.

Tube Map, 1933. Design: Harry Beck. London’s Transport Museum. © Transport for London.

By recreating snapshots of iconic interiors, we are guided through the 20th century, through a series of what curator Sophie McKinlay calls "design moments".

"We wanted an overview of modern design, but we wanted to look at some detail," she explains. "These moments all feature aspects of design that we are still living with today. They have transformed our lives."

The many ‘moments’ include the work of Swiss champion of the 1930s minimalist interior, Le Corbusier, through to Dieter Rams’ chunky, pleasing designs for Braun home appliances.

Stanley Kubrick’s visionary set designs for 2001: A Space Odyssey, are reconstructed. Designers as diverse as Manchester’s architect of the 1980s nightclubbing experience, Peter Saville, to Pick’s design team and their revolutionary map are brought together.

Everyday objects such as book jackets, record covers, magazines and even the humble road sign are featured.

Charlotte Perriand on the B306 Chaise Longue, 1928. Design: Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, Edouard Jeanneret.

Le Corbusier’s elegant tubular steel chaise longue proves the point about endurance. Designed by his Paris studio in 1928, it’s still the centrepiece of the 21st century Hoxton loft apartment.

The accompanying display shows how Le Corbusier caused a sensation in 1929 with Equipment for a Dwelling, a showcase design for a model modern apartment, with a daringly visible bathing space.

Another display is dedicated to British road signage. Developed in the 1950s and 60s by graphic designers Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, the efficient combination of symbols and the distinct upper and lower case modernist font adhere to a rigorous and economical system of coded shapes and colours: triangles warn, circles command and rectangles inform.

Kinneir and Calvert were commissioned to design the system as part of the British government’s 1950s motorway construction programme. Like Pick’s map, their designs endure.

SAS Royal Hotel Copenhagen, 1961. Design: Arne Jacobsen. © Radisson Hotels.

The exhibition concludes with a bold manifesto for the present state of 21st century design, The New Anti-Design.

Spanish product designer Marti Guixe, who has identified and championed the movement, has created an installation featuring what is described as ‘new acerbic product design’, where monetary value is irrelevant; nothing costs over £10.

Sophie McKinlay explains how she came to commission the installation: "We went to the 2004 Milan Furniture Fair. Guixe had taken over an old showroom down a side street, where he had exhibited a graffitied plastic chair. It was an antidote to the expensive furniture on show around the rest of the city."

So why did she commission him for the exhibition? "No one does things like him. He occupies a unique position," she says.

Statement Chair – limited edition of ten signed chairs, 2004. Design: Marti Guixe. © Foto Imagekontainer.

"He asks us to question what is ‘good design’. Does it have to be expensive, or can it be playful and thought provoking? If you want an ornate gold picture frame, you can choose to spend lots of money, or you can, as Guixe encourages us, construct one from masking tape and be involved in the design process yourself."

Guixe engages and entertains. Included are the d-i-y gold frame, the graffiti chair, and what on first inspection looks like two stacks of cheap plastic carrier bags which seem to morph into floppy-armed, smiley-faced characters if visitors stop to stare long enough.

It seems that today’s isolated consumers could do with a friendly face.

From the studios of Le Corbusier to the maverick New Anti-Design, the purpose of good design is to enhance everyday life.

If today’s New Anti-Designers see their task to be to jolt glazed consumers into mass revolt, then Frank Pick, with his maxim of “fitness for use”, would probably have approved.