Industrial Design ebook

A dapper French World War I veteran immigrant to the United States armed with an engineering degree, drawing skills, and fastidious refined taste, the author was a pioneer in the concept of industrial design. As a Paris teenager, he had invented, produced, and marketed a successful toy airplane. In the U.S. he initially immersed himself as an illustrator in the fashion industry. Then he sought to improve the design of industrial products with several simultaneous aims in view: improving appearance, performance, safety, efficiency of production and maintenance, labeling, and packaging; increasing sales, and reducing manufacturing cost. He had a particular personal fascination with transportation and aerodynamic speed.

Bemoaning the Industrial Revolution and ridiculing its methods and output is an ongoing obsession of cultural arbiters, intuitively or purposely hoping to marginalize it and sabotage it with inefficient operating and regulatory handicaps so it would lose its cost advantage over handicrafts. Suppression of consumer demand (interpreted by the author as a manifestation of unwarranted fear) was so successful in augmenting the misery of the Great Depression that even the cultural establishment was spooked, or at least ostensibly commiserated; they considered the stock-market crash just payback, but those immediately affected were led to believe that a free ride was a sustainable sure bet and an entitlement, and that the time-honored rules no longer applied to the New Era. Fabian Socialists reversed course and pretended to endorse the Industrial Revolution until the three generations then alive had died off, while continuing to sabotage it behind the scenes. Raymond Loewy's innovative streamlined designs and colors helped revive popular appeal of industrial products. Rather than disdaining the Industrial Revolution, he evidently was inspired by it and appreciated its egalitarian benefits, concentrating on enhancing the demotic lifestyle by disguising the ugly aspects with a touch of artistic creativity.

His range embraced railroads, ships, automobiles, tractors, buses, airplanes, helicopters, spacecraft, appliances, furniture, retail stores, and corporate logos. Obedient to his idiosyncratic obsession, all of his early product designs were streamlined, whether they were related to transportation or not; the surfaces were smooth, free of the classical embellishments which prohibited easy maintenance. He redesigned the styling of the Pennsylvania RR's standard electric locomotives in conjunction with its ambitious Northeast Corridor electrification, and its torpedo-like steam locomotives. In keeping with the theme of the period, however, some of his locomotive designs were hideous monstrosities, and some passenger interiors cold and uninviting. Having to balance innumerable competing and often irreconcilable considerations, RR managers can be some of the most skeptical customers imaginable, often mystifying and seemingly unreasonable. The author was able to satisfy the quirks of such people. He ushered ocean liners into the modern age, and designed the interior for the supersonic transport Concorde. A prime source of personal pride and pleasure were his automotive designs for Studebaker and its Avanti sports car ('Avanti!'. was the long-standing name of the Italian Socialist Party newspaper.)

Well-known trademarks include Exxon's name and logo, Greyhound's improved logo and bus styling, International Harvester's machinery image, logo, and showrooms, and logos for Nabisco, Canada Dry, Sealtest, and Trans World Airlines. He revamped displays in Gimbels department stores. The familiar gasoline station and many other commonplace backdrops of modern life are credited to him. His efforts were supported by his large international staff, as well as collaboration with the staff engineers and manufacturers of his clients. His success afforded him an opulent lifestyle with multiple homes in three countries, elegant conveyances of all kinds, and impressive contacts. He portrays himself as the Frank Lloyd Wright of industrial design.

Coming to regret the garish self-parody that marked the evolution of streamlining, led by the Edsel motorcar, presumably a rebuke by fellow artists to the effrontery of his designs in postponing the primitive counter-industrial Millennium, he happily conformed to the retrograde unadorned regimented box style which abruptly succeeded it, featuring reduced differentiation among models and production years. Although he never forsook his industrial clients, his later efforts concentrated on the U.S. government, promoting nationwide standardized efficiency and safety. He designed the paint scheme and some interiors for Air Force One, and astronaut living quarters in NASA's Skylab manned orbital space station.

This book features superbly expressed concepts, insights, revelations, and recollections, and copious illustrations of the author's designs.

This book is a great resource for Loewy designs, made all the better by placing them in their design and historical contexts.

It's a coffee table book that doesn't provide much information on loewy or his designs.

This is a great book for car nuts (like me) who thought that the 1953 Studebaker Starliner Coupe was the highlight of Raymond Loewy’s career with the Avanti a close second. Industrial designers probably think of these projects more as interesting footnotes to a wide-ranging career in numerous areas of design from ships to corporate logos.

Unlike many other business executives Loewy doesn’t feel he has brilliant management insights that he needs to share with the world. He simply presents his work and lets it speak for itself with just enough of his commentary to put each picture into a larger context.

I have always been a fan of Raymond Loewy. His work is iconic for the Deco period. Very good book for a designer like myself.

Now much happier with this book which is also worth reading. Deffinately a must have for a designer

paul bruce

Raymond Loewy was one of the practical artists of the 20th century, designing new and better devices, particularly to make them easier to use, and to look at. He ushered in the modern look to aircraft, washing machines, mixers, and locomotives, among hundreds of others that established the unique sleekness that was the mark of American products. I bought this illustrated biography for my granddaughter who is entering college and wants to be an industrial designer. She was a bit put off at first because the field is so crowded, but she has great talent, and I told her that they said the same thing to discourage Raymond Loewy. We should always follow our dreams and best instincts, going the path for which we were each put on earth to follow. This is a book just to have on your coffee table to browse through and marvel at the wonderful ideas and designs that came out of one man's mind. He was the designer of an era.

This book offers a great history of Industrial Design through the eyes of modern Industrial Designer, Raymond Loewy. I really liked the pictures that take up over half of the book which really emphasize the role that design has played in modern life. Each set of pictures has a detailed description of the what Loewy's connection with it was and how he went about designing it.