American Way of Life

The “good old days” whose popular images of

husbands mowing lawns, wives vacuuming in high
heels and white children playing with the family
dog have been inscribed on the American
consciousness.
As a consumer culture assumed social
dominance for the first time in history, the
commercial practice of design became more
significant than ever.

New products—automobiles, phonographs,

radios, toasters, washing machines,
refrigerators, vacuum cleaners—had to be
given forms reflecting modernity…Consumers
had to decide how much to modernize
domestic surroundings.

Raymond Loewy
Lucky Strike package, 1950s
Cadillac 1957

In the 50s there was an

economic motive for
increased consumption
among the mass of people.
The Volkswagen Type 2, known officially (depending on body type) as
the Transporter, Kombi or Microbus, is a forward control light
commercial vehicle introduced in 1950 by the German automaker
Volkswagen as its second car model.

1959 Volkswagen Westfalia Camper at The Henry Ford

The GMC PD-4501 Scenicruiser, manufactured by General Motors (GM)
was a two-level coach that Greyhound used from July 1954 into the
mid-1970s. 1001 were made between 1954 and 1956.
Mercedes-Benz 300 SL was a two-seat
sports car which was produced as a
gullwinged coupe (1954–1957) and roadster
(1957–1963).
Mercedes-Benz 190 SL was a two-door
luxury roadster produced between May
1955 and February 1963. It was an
affordable alternative to the exclusive
Mercedes-Benz 300 SL.
Both cars had double wishbones in
front and swing axles at the rear.
Hoover constellation vacuum cleaner, 1956. A particularly "space age“
American design of the 1950s, noted for its use of exhaust air to make it
hover, coupled with a futuristic spherical shape and fashionable
colouring,
 Barbie Doll was manufactured
by the American toy company
Mattel, Inc. and launched in
March 1959. Businesswoman
Ruth Handler is credited with
the creation of the doll.

Hula hoop’s new plastic version was

popularized in 1958 by the Wham-O
toy company and became a fad.
1950s Advertising
The 1950s were sometimes referred to as “the
advertiser’s dream decade.”

With the end of the war came a new desire for

Americans to spend money. The television was now a
common household staple and the advertising
opportunities seemed endless.
Vance Packar’s description of the role of
the advertising men of the 1950s.

“They want to put some sizzle into their

messages by stirring up our status
consciousness. Many of the products
they are trying to sell have, in the past,
been confined to a 'quality market'. The
products have been the luxuries of the
upper classes. The game is to make
them the necessities of all classes… By
striving to buy the product – say, wall-
to-wall carpeting on instalment – the
consumer is made to feel he is
upgrading himself socially.”
Lipton Soup, 1959
Lucky Strike, 1951 Chesterfield, 1955
 Kodak -Streamlining Your Memories, 1952
Chevrolet, 1957
Prominent Designers
Norman Bel Geddes
April 27, 1893 – May 8, 1958
An American theatrical and industrial designer. He
designed appliances for Electrolux, seltzer bottles for
Walter Kidde, vanities for the Simmons Company, and
a chrome-plated cocktail set for Revere Copper and
Brass that is an exclamation point of Art Moderne.

Bel Geddes was a key figure in the first generation of

Very rare pair of Easy Chair and Ottoman designed by Bel Geddes, 1950s industrial designers, including men like Henry Dreyfuss,
Walter Dorwin Teague, and Raymond Loewy.
 The theatre and industrial designer who The New York Times  dubbed “the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century”

Teardrop Streamlined car design,

Having designed everything from household appliances to
1934.
transcontinental trains, Bel Geddes turned his sights to the Shows fascination with Futurism
skies, creating in 1929 one of the most ambitious commercial
airliner concepts ever put to paper: A nine-story flying
amphibious behemoth dubbed simply “Airliner #4.”
Streamlined car design, Motor
Car No. 9 with tail fin, 1933
 Henry Dreyfuss
March 2, 1904 —October 5, 1972
An American Industrial designer noted for the number and
variety of his pioneering designs for modern products.

After 1953, colour transformed the telephone

from a basic technology into an alluring
consumer product encouraging women to see
the phone as an element of home decoration.

Princess Phone, 1959, this example

was manufactured in 1960 
One of the New York Central
Hudsons given a streamlined
casing of Henry Dreyfuss'
design.

NYC Hudsons were a popular

series of 4-6-4 "Hudson" type
steam locomotives.

Promotional Image of a "Dreyfuss"

streamlined NYC Hudson Locomotive
Raymond Loewy
American pioneer of consumer design
November 5, 1893 – July 14, 1986
A French-born American known as the
father of industrial design, and the world’s
leading expert in creating visuals, probably
helping to sell the most products in history
when it comes to consumer culture.

From Air Force One to Lucky Strikes to Coca

Cola to Greyhound buses to space ships –
Raymond Loewy created the Americana!
Streamlined Pencil Sharpener
Legendary enough to have been commemorated
with a US Postal Service stamp in 2011, the
streamlined pencil sharpener was one of Loewy's
earlier designs.
Loewy later had another encounter with the USPS in designing a
memorial stamp for John F. Kennedy.

Streamline Moderne featured more minimalistic curves that were also

aerodynamic. Architectural ornaments, for instance, were replaced with
simpler materials such as glass and concrete.
President John F. Kennedy’s Air Force One
In 1962, Loewy offered to give Air Force
One a new look. Of the several sketches
that Loewy proposed, President Kennedy
chose one with red and gold colouring–and
asked that it be rendered in blue, his and
First Lady Jackie Kennedy’s favourite colour.

Gouache, coloured pencil, graphite on paper

Giving Coca Cola a Modern look
When King and Family sized
packaging were introduced in 1955,
Raymond Loewy was part of the
team that worked to recast the bottle
but still keep the proper proportions

Loewy liked to say the “goal of design is to sell” and

“the loveliest curve I know is the sales curve”: the
Coca-Cola bottle boasts lovely curves and is a globally
recognised design that sells like… Coca-Cola. 

The only significant change in its 100-year history came in 1957 when Raymond Loewy and John
Ebstein, his chief of staff, replaced the embossed Coca-Cola logo with bright white applied lettering.
Loewy designed iconic
classics for The Coca-Cola
Company.

The company first hired

Loewy to modernize its
vending equipment, but he
also worked on several
items that are now
considered classics, from
the streamlined cooler to
the Dole Deluxe fountain
dispenser to the Hobbs
truck body.
Shell Logo  
Over its long and storied history, the Royal Dutch
Shell company has always been represented by the
image of a seashell, but it wasn’t until 1971 that its
logo took on the more geometric form by which it
is known around the world today

Shell logo by Raymond Loewy Shell logo before 1971

Greyhound Scenicruiser
Loewy's work with the Greyhound Lines bus company
involved both the creation of a new streamlined logo
and bold new design innovations.

1950
New Design Institutes
IIT Institute of Design

Founded in 1937 by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy as the

the New Bauhaus in Chicago, as a graduate school
teaching systemic, human-centred design.
Ulm School of Design
The Hochschule fuer Gestaltung Ulm

Founded in 1953 by
Otl Aicher, Inge
Aicher-Scholl and
Max Bill.
It was the Bauhaus’s
Influential Successor.
The vision was to train
socially-minded designers
who used modernist
principles to build a new
world view where the
designer’s role was seen as
integral for building a new,
brighter society.

Ulm School of Design Building was designed by Max Bill 

Design education at the Ulm School:
The subjects of sociology, psychology,
politics, economics, philosophy and systems-
thinking were integrated with aesthetics and
technology.

During HfG operations from 1953–1968,

progressive approaches to the design process
were implemented within the departments
of Product Design, Visual Communication,
Industrialized Building, Information and
Filmmaking.

Designer and Ulm School professor, Hans Gugelot with students and Braun products.
Courtesy of HfG-Archiv/Ulmer Museum
Otl Aicher designed the system of
pictograms for the 1972 Munich Olympics
and in recent years, Norman Foster
commissioned Otl Aicher to design the
corporate image and communication
system for the Bilbao metro.
Student advertising poster, 1955. Poster designed by Margarete Kögler
in the class of Otl Aicher.
Assignment:
Design of a surface which area cannot be defined

Non-orientable surface, 1956/57, plaster.

HfG basic course, Josef

Albers with folding object,
1953.
Campaign images for
Herman Miller, shot
by Ulm photography
professor Wolfgang
Soil, 1961.

In 1961, photography
professor Wolfgang Soil and a
team of students directed
and photographed a
campaign for the American
furniture company Herman
Miller, though it never ran.
 Assignment:
Assignment:
Design of a TV and a Disc Player
Street lights
Magazine of the
Ulm School of
Design
The National
Institute of Design
Founded in 1961 by the Indian government and
global connections.
In 1957 the Government of India requested the Ford Foundation to
invite Charles and Ray Eames to visit India. On April 7, 1958, the
Eameses presented the India Report to the Government of India,
defining the underlying spirit that would lead to the founding of NID
and beginning of design education in India.
The Report recommended a problem-solving design consciousness
that linked learning with actual experience and suggested that the
designer could be a bridge between tradition and modernity.