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Bringing Grace to the Quotidian: The Inner World of Industrial Design
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14477 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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3 / 1988 |
1,870 Words |
| Author
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Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Hugh Aldersey-Williams is a writer specializing in
architecture, technology, and other subjects. |
It is ironic that one of the events most signifying the birth of the new and truly American profession of industrial design happened in 1929 when an Englishman, Sigmund Gestetner (owner of the duplicating-machine company bearing his name), asked a Frenchman, Raymond Loewy, to restyle one of his products. Loewy, who had come to America after World War I, was to go on to reshape a host of products. His influence is still highly visible today. Such American icons as the silver Greyhound bus, the old streamlined Coca-Cola dispenser, and the distinctive roundel of the Lucky Strike cigarette pack were results of his inspiration as well as of the perspiration of his largely unsung staff of designers.
About the same time as Loewy was sketching his new Gestetner machine, two other young designers were making their contributions. Walter Dorwin Teague was at work on the Kodak Bantam special camera, and the young Henry Dreyfuss was busy fashioning the standard Bell telephone--the design for which, with minor modifications, would remain the standard for the next half-century.
Grace Sought
These three men--from the varied fields of engineering, stage-set design, and graphic design--saw the need for a new design discipline that would bring a measure of grace to the burgeoning number of mechanical fixtures invading American homes and workplaces as the techniques of mass-manufacture fanned the flame of emerging consumer culture. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, of course, goods had been both mass-designed and -produced, but it was not until the 1930s that the distinct profession of industrial designer came into being. Loewy, Teague, and Dreyfuss defined the new profession by the nature of their work, and institutionalized it by spearheading the founding of what is now the Industrial Designers' Society of America, an organization with more than two thousand members nationwide.
"Industrial design" was always something of an opaque term. Even in the best of times, it did little to explain what its practitioners actually did. But today as we enter the post-industrial age, it is more confusing than ever. The design of today's products by a new generation of young studios cannot be called industrial, but neither is it mere styling. Their work is bringing a level of excitement to American-made products that has not been known since the days of Loewy. With microelectronic miniaturization and the perfection of complex plastic-fabrication techniques, they are suddenly freer to experiment with product form. There are curious echoes from the Loewy
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