tom howard design

Raymond Loewy’s book is a fascinating insight into his creative career which has spand over five decades. It is truly outstand what he has managed to achieved in his life time as an industrial designer.

Below: Skylab System, NASA, 1975.

Raymond Lowey started worked as a fashion illustrator in the Twenties, then came the Thirties with the great American depression he survived and started a design agency where he convinced companies that product prestige and investing in high quality design was good for corporate image, profits and would benefit the consumer.

In the Forties World War II happened, He was asked by Washington to help maintain the morale of the American woman. So he designed the first cardboard swivel lipstick which didn’t use any critical war metals, the lipsticks sold in there millions. He also went on to design transport systems for General Motors, United Airlines the Greyhound Bus System his firm also rebranded for the like of Coca-Cola, Shell, BP, the list goes on.

Come the Fifties he was redesigning the entire logical and architectural layout of Shell and Nabisco to improve their efficiency. The Loewy organization branched further into modern transportation and he started to work on projects for BMW and the French helicopter Alouette.

Above: Concept Development Skylab System, NASA, 1975.

By the Sixties he was designing the exterior graphic for Air Force One and his company took on a lot of government based projects, including the human factor design for the Skylab system which was a NASA project they were going to used to enter into space with.

Below: Concept Development Skylab System, NASA, 1975.

In the Seventies he started up a new design agency in Europe which acted as a think tank for his corporate clients, his agency specialised in new technology and innovational design his studio still continued to work on transportation and rebranding projects for some of his American clients. Raymond Loewy’s book is a fascinating insight into the dreams of one man and how designs can be used as a fantastic tool to improve people’s lives.

Above: Concept Development Skylab System, NASA, 1975.

Tags: Marc Newson, Raymond Lowey

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 11:42 pm and is filed under .Inspirational Books, .Product Design, Raymond Lowey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.