Artist of the Day, December 17, 2020: Raymond Loewy, a French-born American industrial designer (#1174)

Raymond Loewy (1893 – 1986) was a French-born American industrial designer who achieved fame for the magnitude of his design efforts across a variety of industries.

He spent most of his professional career in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1938. Among his designs were the Shell, Exxon, TWA and the former BP logos, the Greyhound Scenicruiser bus, Coca-Cola vending machines and bottle redesign. the Lucky Strike package, Coldspot refrigerators, the Studebaker Avanti and Champion, and the Air Force One livery. He was engaged by equipment manufacturer International Harvester to overhaul its entire product line, and his team also assisted competitor Allis-Chalmers. He undertook numerous railroad designs, including the Pennsylvania Railroad GG1, S-1, and T1 locomotives, the color scheme and Eagle motif for the first streamliners of the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and a number of lesser known color scheme and car interior designs for other railroads. His career spanned seven decades.

Loewy was born in Paris in 1893, the son of Maximilian Loewy, a Jewish journalist from Austria, and a French mother, Marie Labalme. Loewy distinguished himself early with the design of a successful model aircraft, which won the Gordon Bennett Cup for model airplanes in 1908.

Loewy served in the French army during World War I, attaining the rank of captain. He was wounded in combat and received the Croix de guerre. After the war he moved to New York, where he arrived in September 1919.

In Loewy's early years in the United States, he lived in New York and found work as a window designer for department stores, including Macy's, Wanamaker's and Saks in addition to working as a fashion illustrator for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. In 1929 he received his first industrial-design commission to contemporize the appearance of a duplicating machine by Gestetner. Further commissions followed, including work for Westinghouse, the Hupp Motor Company (the Hupmobile styling), and styling the Coldspot refrigerator for Sears-Roebuck. It was this product that established his reputation as an industrial designer. He opened a London office in the mid-1930s that continues to operate.

In 1937, Loewy established a relationship with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and his most notable designs for the firm involved some of their passenger locomotives. In 1946, at the Pennsylvania Railroad's request, he restyled Baldwin's diesels with a distinctive "sharknose" reminiscent of the T1. He also designed the experimental steam turbine engine V1 "Triplex" for PRR which was never built.

Loewy had a long and fruitful relationship with American car maker Studebaker. Studebaker first retained Loewy and Associates and Helen Dryden as design consultants in 1936 and in 1939 Loewy began work with the principal designer Virgil Exner. Their designs first began appearing with the late-1930s Studebakers.

During World War II, American government restrictions on in-house design departments at Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler prevented official work on civilian automobiles. Because Loewy's firm was independent of the fourth-largest automobile producer in America, no such restrictions applied. This permitted Studebaker to launch the first all-new postwar automobile in 1947, two years ahead of the "Big Three." His team developed an advanced design featuring flush-front fenders and clean rearward lines. The Loewy staff, headed by Exner, also created the Starlight body, which featured a rear-window system that wrapped 180° around the rear seat.

The Starlight has consistently ranked as one of the best-designed cars of the 1950s in lists compiled since by Collectible Automobile, Car and Driver, and Motor Trend. The '53 Starliner, recognized today as "one of the most beautiful cars ever made".

In the spring of 1961, Studebaker's new president, Sherwood Egbert, recalled Loewy to design the Avanti. Egbert hired him to help energize Studebaker's soon-to-be-released line of 1963 passenger cars to attract younger buyers.

Despite the short 40-day schedule allowed to produce a finished design and scale model, Loewy agreed to take the job. He recruited a team consisting of experienced designers, including former Loewy employees John Ebstein; Bob Andrews; and Tom Kellogg, a young student from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. The team worked in a house leased for the purpose in Palm Springs, California.

Raymond Loewy worked for NASA from 1967 to 1973 as a Habitability Consultant for design of the Skylab space station, launched in 1973. One of NASA's goals in hiring him was to improve the psychology, safety, and comfort of manned spacecraft. Due to long duration confinement in limited interior space in micro-g with almost non-existing variability in environment, the comfort and well-being of the crew through the use of esthetics played high importance. Loewy suggested a number of improvements to the layout, such as the implementation of a wardroom, where the crew could eat and work together, the wardroom window, the dining table and the color design, among others. A key feature of Raymond Loewy's design for the sleep compartments was that the floor plan for each of the three was different to create a sense of individual identity for each compartment.

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Mr. Raymond Loewy

 Lucky Strike cigarettes
1930s

BELMONT Bakelite Radio
1930s

The Globe radio
1933

Coldspot Refrigerator
1934

Streamlined Pencil sharpener
1934

 PRR S1 Locomotive for Pennsylvania Railroad
1939

 PRR S1 Locomotive for Pennsylvania Railroad
1939

The Greyhound Scenicruiser
1946

Communications Receiver (model S-40A)
1947

Kitchen cabinet set
1950s

Lawn Chef Portable Grill
1950

Nabisco logo
1950s

Studebaker Champion
1950s

Telephone stand
1950s

Ansco Anscoflex II Film Camera
1953-56

Coca-Cola vending machines, soda dispensers, delivery trucks, and bottles
1955

Coca-Cola vending machines, soda dispensers, delivery trucks, and bottles
1955

Flame Orange Le Creuset Tostador
1955

launch of the Coquelle Le Creuset set design
1958

Air France Concorde Spoon Fork Knife Utensil Set
1960s

Chrome drawer chest
1960s

Livery design for Air Force One
1962

Air Force One's livery
1962

Coffee shop New York International
1962

Studebaker Avanti
1962

Avanti automobile 1962

Studebaker Avanti
1963

Design for Studebaker "Wagonaire" Station Wagon
1963

Exxon Logo
1966

NASA design sketches
1967-73

Coop Logo
1968

Elna Lotus sewing machine
1968

New Man logo
1969

Shell logo
1971

NASA Skylab
1973

Loewy kitchen design