Google's tribute to famous window dresser...industrial designer, Raymond Loewy.

[botsapper]

https://www.google.com/

Google Doodle remembers the 'father of industrial design', Raymond Loewy, who created or repackaged products and brands to be easily marketed and made beautiful for the consumer public. He may have started as a window dresser but his career progressed and designed many iconic designs that is still etched in our daily consciousness; Skylab, Air Force One livery, Coca Cola bottle, corporate branding -Shell, Exxon, US Postal Service logos, and the famous PRR Si aero locomotives, '41 Lincoln Continental and the Studebaker Avanti. His flamboyant designs flourished was also known as the streamline style, smooth forms to strongly suggest speed - symbolic of the dynamism and optimism of their times. The scientific basis of optimal flow required sharp corners to be rounded off. Smooth lines or chrome strips were added on almost every object to theatrically express speed, irrespective of their true function and specific content. The style attracted consumers of a glorious future, now.

[Cd]

[botsapper]

Known for the fashionable aerodynamic 'look', Raymond Loewy really knows his aerodynamics. As a 15-year old University of Paris electrical engineering student, he designed a rubber-powered model airplane that won the 1909 J. Gordon Bennett Cup model airplane competition by having the longest flight time. He also brought out his business genius, he patented his design, manufactured them in a rented workshop and sold them throughout Europe. WW1 intervened his engineering studies, the British consul introduced him to Conde Nast, publisher of Vogue and Vanity Fair. That introduction led him to New York City and found work as a fashion illustrator and window fashion designer. The high level fashion world introduced him to the America's biggest industry giants and started his industrial design consultancy in giving Industrial Revolution Era machines, a 'beauty makeover'.

[gone-ot]

I still think his 1953 Starliner and 1963 Avanti contributions to Studebaker are the best automotive designs I've ever seen.

[kach22i]

About 35 years ago the TV program 60-Minutes did a segment on Loewy, which is how I first found out he designed the Avanti.

Studebaker Avanti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Designed by Raymond Loewy's team of Tom Kellogg, Bob Andrews and John Ebstein on a 40-day crash program........

Maybe today's Google salute will educate some young person about his work.