With his background, Heskett began to write history considering social, economic and political as components of design. In the early 1970s, he became part of an emerging generation of historians of design. A variety of positions followed before he obtained a design history post at
Lanchester Polytechnic (1967–77). Then he taught design history and theory in Sheffield, and at
Ravensbourne College,
Bromley, in south-east
London (1984–89). In the late 1970s, he became a prominent member of a group of academics who developed the discipline of design history and theory. His first book,
Industrial Design, published in 1980, was instantly successful, since it provided one of the first accounts of industrial design as responses to changes in production methods and the organization of capitalism. His 2002 book,
Toothpicks and Logos: Design in Everyday Life, became a common introductory text to design history due to its wide scope and interdisciplinary breadth.
In United States Heskett left the United Kingdom for the United States in 1988, first to work on a project with the Design Management Institute in Boston, and, then after 1989, to teach in the graduate programmes of the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. By 1990, he was working for a Japanese consultancy and, throughout the next decades, he was invited to speak and advise at institutional and governmental levels in Mexico, Chile, Finland, Japan, Taiwan and South Africa.
In Hong Kong Since 2004 in Hong Kong, Heskett undertook teaching and research concerning the roles of design in production and more widely in the economy as a whole, examining design policy at national levels in the United States, Europe and, increasingly, Asia. Heskett was a member of the
INDEX: Design to Improve Life Award Jury from 2004 and a board member of the
Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design from 2007. ==Personal life==