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Raymond Loewy Quotes

Raymond Loewy was a French-born American industrial designer who achieved fame for the magnitude of his design efforts across a variety of industries. He was recognized for this by Time magazine and featured on its cover on October 31, 1949.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.

The press referred to Loewy as The Man Who Shaped America, The Father of Streamlining and The Father of Industrial Design. Wikipedia  

✵ 5. November 1893 – 14. July 1986
Raymond Loewy photo
Raymond Loewy: 7   quotes 0   likes

Famous Raymond Loewy Quotes

“Is it responsible to camouflage one of America's most remarkable machines as a piece of gaudy merchandise? Form, which should be the clean- cut expression of mechanical excellence has become sensuous and organic.”

Raymond Loewy

Raymond Loewy 1950s, cited in: Karal Ann Marling, ‎Donald J. Bush, ‎Walker Art Center (1989) Autoeroticism. p. 16
Loewy commented on the new generation automobiles, after having designed the Studebaker of 1953, which according to Loewy looked like "jukeboxes on wheels."

“I believe one should design for the advantage of the largest mass of people, first and always. That takes care of ideologies and sociologies.”

Raymond Loewy

Raymond Loewy, cited in: William Marling (1998) The American Roman Noir: Hammett, Cain, and Chandler. p. 279

“Design is too important to be left to designers.”

Raymond Loewy

Attributed to Raymond Loewy in: Adam Richardson (2010) Innovation X, p. 184

“This book is the story of a young man who came to America to make a living, and simply happened to do so in a profession which he helped to create.”

Raymond Loewy

Introduction
Never Leave Well Enough Alone (1951)

“Industrial design keeps the customer happy, his client in the black and the designer busy.”

Raymond Loewy

Raymond Loewy (ca. 1949); Cited in: Paul Greenhalgh (1993) Quotations and Sources on Design and the Decorative Arts. p. 117

“A lot of people are open to new things, as long as they look like the old ones.”

Raymond Loewy

Raymond Loewy (1951); As cited in: Angèle H. Reinders et al. The Power of Design. p. 93

“I never expected that one could fall so completely in love with a nation and a people. I already knew that very soon I would thrill at everything American, love everything American, perhaps blindly, but fervently and forever. I still remember how thrilled I was at the sight of the flag. After all these years, every time I see the Stars and Stripes in the breeze, I get the same emotional feeling. Aesthetically speaking, it is perfect. One of the outstanding "designs" of all times. It may be that a nation gets the flag it deserves.”

Raymond Loewy

Source: Never Leave Well Enough Alone (1951), Chapter 1

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