B U S I N E S S & F I N A N C E

Up from the EggIn his Manhattan apartment early one morn-

ing last week, Industrial Designer RaymondLoewy awoke with a start. As he flipped a bed-side switch, soft indirect light spread over wallsmade of egg-crate fiber and over a group of im-probable furnishings—a Tahitian drum, Congoceremonial sword, Chinese helmet, Moroccanfly-switch, Senegalese war hatchet and gro-tesque Zulu masks. Loewy, who gets some ofhis best ideas in bed (and no nightmares fromthe masks), reached for the ever-present memopad beside his pillow and scribbled a cryptic note:Why not a suction cap for shaving-cream tubes?

The idea captured, frail as it was, Loewy wentback to sleep until a Loewy-designed alarm clocktinkled at 7 a.m., turning him out into a worldfilled with the products of his night & day dream-ing. In his black, beige and bronze bathroom,with its motif of Nubian slaves, he plugged in hisLoewy-designed Schick electric razor, used atoothbrush and tube of toothpaste he had mod-eled for Pepsodent, tore off the wrapper he haddesigned for Lux soap. Even the expensivelytailored grey suit he put on was his own snuglyfitting creation. Its special feature: inch-and-a-half cuffs on the sleeves, which could be replacedwhen frayed (a designer’s fray quickly).

In the combination living & dining room, glit-tering with thousands of flecks of gold-coloredplastic thread woven in chairs, sofa and carpet,the huge mirror forming the far wall parted;through it, from her hidden boudoir, stepped ViolaLoewy, his 28-year-old bride of less than a year,to join him at breakfast.

After eating, Loewy descended ten floors tohis spanking new 1950 Studebaker convertiblewaiting at the curb. That he had designed too—along with all the Studebakers since the war—and thereby helped set a new fashion in auto-mobiles. Loewy’s own car had a few special flam-boyant frills: a plastic tail-fin, a tiny gold grilledair scoop above the emblem on the hood, re-cessed door handles, porthole windows andother eyecatchers to start pedestrians’ tonguesawagging with the name of Studebaker—andShowman Loewy.

Man at Work. Loewy and his 143 designers,architects and draftsmen were busier than everspreading that name & fame on a dozen newprojects. They had signed up to modernizeRaglands department store on Texas’ famed KingRanch (TIME, Dec. 15, 1947); they had just com-pleted the first part of a face-lifting forManhattan’s Gimbel Brothers (cried Gimbels infull-page ads: “We are speechless”). Their newtwo-level Greyhound bus, (the Scenicruiser) wasbeing road-tested on Michigan roads. For Cali-fornia they were planning a state fair.

Hardly had Loewy stepped into his muted greyand beige penthouse office high above Fifth Av-enue, when more jobs rolled in, e.g., a televi-

sion maker wanted him to draw up sketches fora new line of cabinets. “Fine.” said Loewy, “I spent$2,000 on my own set and it hasn’t worked rightsince I bought it.” From Glamour magazine camea phone call: How about an article on theaterdesign? “Wonderful.’’ said Loewy. “I’ve been wait-ing for a chance to tell everyone what’s wrongwith theaters.” Then Loewy paced nervouslythrough the various cubicles where his associ-ates were planning new designs for everythingfrom tiepins to locomotives.

He looked over models of the interiors of threenew ocean liners for American President Lines,hurried on to pick up a new bottle for Lever Bros.Loewy thought it would be nice to put some kindof shock absorber on the bottom (“The clash ofglass against a sink isn’t good”). From his pockethe whipped out his hasty design for the tube-topmade as a suction cup (to hold the tube againstthe wall while in use). “Make one up and I’ll try itat home for a week or two,” he said.

Loewy stopped to look ruefully at the flat let-tering on a new ice-cream package. “It’s for homefreezer units,” he protested, “where there isn’tmuch light. The brand name has to jump rightout at you.” Grabbing scissors and glossy, col-ored paper, he snipped out a design, slappedthe brand lettering against it and held it up: thename jumped out, all right.

Designer Loewy, who likes good food, but likes

a trim figure better (he keeps his weight close to170 by diet and massage), worked on throughthe lunch hour, pausing only for an apple andsaccharin-sweetened coffee. Then, in & out ofworkrooms again, he stopped by a drafting boardlittered with new tiepin designs, picked up a penciland drew an arrowhead and part of the shaft.“Work some up like this in gold, or black—ormaybe burgundy,” he said in the tone of asuggestion. “Men seem to like burgundy.” At theblueprints for a power-wheel for bicycles for theAmerican Brake Shoe Co., Loewy commented:“Much too heavy.” On his way out he stumbledover some outdoor cooking grills that a new cus-tomer had brought in for redesign. Looking atthe clumsy grills with ill-concealed horror, hemurmured: “Terrible! Terrible!” and rushed off fora rubdown and massage at the New York Ath-letic Club.

The Sleeping Beauty. As the biggest indus-trial designer in the U.S., Raymond FernandLoewy, at 56, is the dominant figure in a field,which in less than a quarter-century has mush-roomed from a groping, uncertain experimentinto a major phenomenon of U.S. business.Design has existed since man made the firstwheel, but the Machine Age, concerned at firstonly with spewing forth its myriad products inincreasing quantity, was slow in discovering theneed for form. As early as 1904 Frank LloydWright was singing the beauties of the machine.As he later put it:

MODERN LIVING

*with Butler-Valet Karl Huzala

TIME, OCTOBER 31, 1949

Now, a chair is a machine to sit in.A home is a machine to live in.The human body is a machine to be worked

by will.A tree is a machine to bear fruit.A plant is a machine to bear flowers and seeds.And ... a heart is a suction-pump.Does that idea thrill you?Not until the late ‘20s did Loewy, Norman Bel

Geddes—industrial design’s greatest prophetand visionary—and a handful of pioneers, in-cluding Walter Dorwin Teague, Henry Dreyfuss,Harold Van Doren, Lurelle Guild, thrill the indus-trial world with an art for the Machine Age.

They pursued the simple principle that everyobject can have an ideal form which, witheconomy and grace, can express its function.Through centuries of trial & error many of man’ssimplest tools —the ax helve, the plowshare, theox yoke —had achieved a utilitarian perfectionof design. In essence, industrial design was abrave attempt to bring the same simplicity to allthe goods and tools of modern living. The de-pression, when industrialists were willing to tryanything to boost sales, gave the designers theirfirst big chance to show what they could do.

The Lusty Child. There were early flops, butthe flops were soon outnumbered by notable suc-cesses. Trim, clean-lined stoves, oil heaters, re-frigerators and washing machines outsold theirugly predecessors and those of competitors.Streamlining, which had the laudable purposeof cutting down wind resistance in trains, cars,etc., became such a craze that it was even in-flicted on such static objects as desk sets. Littleby little the hardy, struggling band proved thattheir artistry could draw that prettiest curve of allto businessmen—an upward-sweeping salescurve.

Today, the infant art of industrial design is fastbecoming as potent a sales force as advertis-ing. Many big companies, like General Motors,General Electric and Westinghouse, have longsince built up design departments of their own,but smaller companies, who cannot afford to doso, must depend exclusively on freelance spe-cialists like Loewy.

With the return of the buyer’s market, everyU.S. manufacturer is cudgeling his brain—andthe brains of designers—to make his productwork better, feel better, look better and sell bet-ter than those of his rivals. This year U.S. busi-ness will spend some $500 million improvingthe way its products look. Of that sum, RaymondLoewy Associates expects to collect $3,000,000,the biggest gross ever. And Loewy expects thathis personal income, which has averaged$200,000 for the past five years, will be boostedalso.

The Shy Salesman. Suave, grey-haired, me-dium-sized (5 ft. 10 in.), Loewy talks in a sub-dued voice that is, at the same time, apologeticand compelling. His face is reposed, gentle, sad,and as inscrutable as that of a Monte Carlo crou-pier. Obsessively shy, he is always “Mr. Loewy”even to his longtime associates. Even to thosewho know him well he is something of anenigma. Said one longtime acquaintance: “After

all these years, I’m not even sure that I like him!”Everything he does calls attention, with skilledshowmanship, to his work, so that observers attimes get the strange feeling that he too is adesign —by Loewy, of course.

Despite his shyness, he is a crack salesmanwho throws no artistic tantrums. Far from turn-ing out designs with offhand sureness, he worksthem over painstakingly until the client is satis-fied. He also has an almost hypnotic power toimpress, persuade and convince the toughesttycoon. Even the American Tobacco Co.’s lateGeorge Washington Hill, who used to frightenadvertising men out of their wits, wilted underLoewy’s gentle suasion. He paid him the whop-ping fee of $50,000 just for designing a new white

package for Lucky Strike in 1942 (“Lucky Strikegreen has gone to war”).

Eggs & Needles. Loewy’s business has grownso large that he now has three working partners:A. Baker Barnhart, who has charge of all pack-aging, product and transportation design; Will-iam Snaith, who manages all department-storework; Business Manager John Breen. There arebranch offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, SouthBend, Ind. and London. All of his designers thinkso much like him that, says an admiring rival, “Ifyou meet any one of them you meet Loewy.”

Says the boss, who takes on jobs for as littleas $500 or as much as $200,000: “If you wantme to do a big thing like a tractor—there are somany obvious things you could do to make it

better-looking that I would take it for very little.But if you want me to redesign a sewing needle,I’d charge $100,000. After all, how can you im-prove a needle? It’s like the perfect functionalshape of an egg.”

As the “great packager” who tricks up boxesand labels, Designer Loewy lures U.S. consum-ers into buying more soap, lard, perfume andhair oils. If he did nothing more than such trivialthings, consumers might well wonder what ben-efit, if any, they get from his work. But he alsoworks just as hard making all manner of thingsbetter and more usable. His new vacuum cleaner(Singer) is the first which is designed to be hungup flat against a closet wall. Foley Bros, depart-ment store, in Houston, was the first departmentstore designed so that a shopper could walkthrough the store making purchases, and havethem all waiting for her when she returned toher car in the store garage. Though Loewy’s workdoes not have the imaginative sweep of DesignerBel Geddes’ visions of triple-decked planes, ro-tary airports and submarinelike ocean liners, hehas a greater influence on current design andmodern living than any other designer simplybecause his pen is in so many different inkpots.

Chain Reaction. A small problem often leadsto much bigger ones. For example, the job ofstreamlining International Harvester’s tractors ledto designing a distinctive new building (1,125have been built) in which to sell them .

Loewy’s first job for the Pennsylvania Railroadwas designing a trash can. That was success-ful, so he went to work blueprinting a new loco-motive. To find out what was wrong with old en-gines. Loewy rode them for thousands of miles,noting such things as the absence of a toilet forthe crew (he installed one), and the fact that

smoke sometimes obscured the engineer’s vi-sion (he devised a vane to deflect it). He woundup designing not only new locomotives but wholenew trains for Pennsylvania (Broadway Limited,“Spirit of St. Louis,” The General. Liberty Lim-ited, etc.), and modern new stations as well. Nowhe is pondering the biggest problem of all: find-ing a better and more profitable way to handleall the road’s freight.

His methods often mystify clients. WhenChicago’s Armour & Co. hired Loewy to rede-sign and repackage its 700-800 different prod-ucts, he disappeared for about six months. SaidVice President Walter S. Shafer: “We didn’t knowwhat he was doing.” Actually, Loewymen wereout talking to hundreds of housewives whobought the products. When Loewy came backhe told Armour to abolish all the multicolor la-bels that it had been using, and substitute asimple two-color pattern throughout. Armoursaved enough money on color-printing alone topay for the designer’s services. As Lever Bros.’Charles Luckman, another client, put it: “Ray-mond keeps one eye on imagination and oneeye on the cash register.”

Flash of a Knife. In 1943 when he begandesigning the first postwar Studebaker, Loewydecided that current cars were too bulky, tooladen with chromium “spinach and schmalz,”and had too many blind spots. What he wantedwas slimness, grace and better visibility. To hisstaff he mapped the grand strategy: “Weight isthe enemy . . . Whatever saves weight savescost. The car must look fast, whether in motionor stationary. I want it to look as if it were leap-ing forward; I want ‘built-in’ motion ... If it looks‘stopped’ it is a dead pigeon ... I want one thatlooks alive as a leaping greyhound.”

He augmented his permanent staff in theStudebaker plant from 28 to 39, talked eachdesign over with engineers to see if it was fea-sible. From hundreds of tentative designsLoewy pulled a curve here, a hood there, afender sweep yonder, then “mocked up” abouta dozen experimental models in clay, one-quar-ter size, and worked on them. SaysStudebaker’s President Harold S. Vance: “I haveseen Loewy shake his head in disapproval, thentake out a knife and with one sweep correct theclay model to perfection.”

When the final model was chosen andmocked up full-size, Loewy called in Stude-baker officials and dramatically whisked thecoverings off the model. Loewy feels that “itis the first impression that counts; either itclicks or it doesn’t.”

It clicked so well that in the last three yearsStudebaker has broken all its peacetime recordsfor sales and profits. Not all Studebaker dealersliked the 1950 models, which came out last Au-gust. Some did not like the rocketlike hood andnose air intake that resembles the 1949 Ford.But Loewy’s answer is in the sales. While mostother independent car-makers were having roughgoing, Studebaker sold more cars in Septemberthan any month in its history. From receivershipless than 15 years ago, Studebaker has climbedback, is now the biggest independent—a smallerfourth to the Big Three.

The Locomotive God. Loewy first dreamedof building cars and locomotives in Paris, wherehe was born and spent the first 26 years of hislife. His father, Maximilian, was a Viennese jour-nalist; his mother, Marie Labalme, a sturdyFrenchwoman who prodded her children by con-tinually telling them: “Better to be envied thanpitied.” Young Raymond, the third of three sons,filled his school notebooks with so manysketches of locomotives, automobiles and air-planes that his parents sent him to engineeringschool.

But at 21, the student engineer was called offto World War I as a private. At the front, he deco-rated his dugout with flowered wallpaper, drap-eries and tufted pillows. He designed himself anew pair of pants because the government-is-sue pants were badly cut (“I enjoyed going intoaction well-dressed”). After four years of war—during which he was burned severely by mus-tard gas—he came out a captain, with a swatchof ribbons on his chest but no money in his pock-ets. His older brother Georges, a doctor in Man-hattan, urged Raymond to join him. At 26, stillwearing his captain’s uniform (the only clothinghe had), Loewy sailed for the U.S. with a totalcapital of $40. Aboard ship, his sketching so im-pressed Sir Harry Gloster Armstrong, then Brit-ish consul general in New York, that he gavehim a note of introduction to Publisher CondeNast.

The publisher, in turn, was also impressed bythe Parisian suavity and horizon-blue uniformof the dapper young officer. He put him to workon fashion illustrations for Vogue, and Loewyswiftly demonstrated his unmatched ability to im-press all the right people.

Before long, the benefit of his shrewd, apprais-ing eye was being respectfully sought by such

merchandising bigwigs as John Wanamaker andHorace Saks.

One day in 1927, at a friend’s home, he metBritain’s Sigmund Gestetner, maker of a famedold duplicating machine whose design had notbeen appreciably changed in 30 years. Loewylugged the duplicator up to his apartment andbuilt a clay model embodying his ideas. Gestet-ner liked it so well that he paid Loewy $2,000 forit and used the same design for 15 years after-ward. (Gestetner paid him a yearly retainer notto design for any competitor.) Overnight, Fash-ion Artist Loewy decided to become an indus-trial designer.

75% Transportation. Loewy quickly found outthat industrial design was not easy: it was “25%inspiration and 75% transportation.” He luggedbriefcases of designs from one manufacturer toanother around the U.S., barely sold enough tokeep body and penthouse together for his firstwife, Nebraska-born Jean Thomson. (Divorcedin 1945, they parted “the best of friends,” andshe still has a 4% interest in his company.)

His first big chance came when Sears, Roe-buck & Co. hired him in 1934 to dress up itsColdspot refrigerator, an ugly machine with adust trap under its spindly legs, and corrugatedshelves inside. Loewy moved the motor fromtop to bottom, chopped off the legs, and installedthe first non-rusting aluminum shelves ever tobe used in a refrigerator. The Coldspot becamea single smooth, gleaming unit of functional sim-plicity—and with it Sears’ sales shot up five-foldby 1936. Loewy had been paid only $2,500 forthe job (and had spent nearly three times that inexpenses), but Sears was glad to pay him$25,000 for his next job. His reputation wasmade.

The Flea Market. As fortune followed fame,he began spending some of the fortune on hispersonal tastes—which are expensive. He usu-

ally spends part of the winter in the $100,000dream house he designed and built in the desertnear Palm Springs, Calif., complete with a swim-ming pool which curves into the living room.Summer always finds him back in France, wherehe has three homes. His relaxing spot is LeTorpillou (the Little Torpedo), a bright, red-tiledvilla overlooking the Cote d’Azur at St. Tropez,and littered with such things as underwater fish-ing gear, which he seldom uses. Near Rambouil-let, outside Paris, he has a i6th Century manor,La Cense, once a lovecote for Henri IV; it teemswith game which Loewy seldom hunts, but headmires the elegant design of its peacocks. Lastyear he acquired an apartment on Paris’ Quaid’Orsay, decorated it with everything from bracedhalberds with baby-pink shafts and ribbonedbows to crystal chandeliers picked up at Paris’flea market.

In his Manhattan apartment, Loewy hasblithely mixed a modern mirror fireplace, Frenchperiod pieces, an Oriental shrine and a crystalchandelier reminiscent of Versailles. Instead ofscattering his considerable collection of modernart (Picasso, Miro and Matisse) about the room,he hung them all frame-to-frame on one wall,used a big Dufy as a hinged cover to concealhis television set which is built into the wall. Somevisitors might quail at such a mish mash, butMrs. Loewy loyally approves it all, saying “I thinkhe has good taste.” Loewy himself has given amore complex definition of his special talents.Says he: “Good design keeps the user happy,the manufacturer in the black, and the estheteunoffended.”

Clay Impressions. In the brave new world ofindustrial design, the brave new designers werehard at work trying to keep users happier by hun-dreds of new products.

Must telephones have their numbers wherethe dialing finger obscures them? Designer

Dreyfuss’ new telephone for the Bell System hasthe numbers outside.

How could chairs be made more comfortable?Manhattan’s Designer Egmont Arens thought itcould be done by taking clay impressions of fat,skinny and in-between posteriors. A one-pieceplastic chair with compound curves more com-fortable than straight lines was being poppedout by General American Transportation Corp.at the rate of one every five minutes.

Did all refrigerators and home freezers haveto be white and hard to keep clean? Milwaukee’sDesigner Brooks Stevens, who designed the Mil-waukee Road’s gleaming new bubble-domedHiawatha train, thought not; he had alreadyturned out a blue freezer (for Ben Hur) whichwas making bigger companies sit up and takenote.

Must theaters have only a small number ofseats in the choicest orchestra rows? AtManhattan’s Savoy-Plaza hotel, Designer BelGeddes was transforming about 10,000 squarefeet of lobby, dining and storage space into amodern theater which, devoid of a prosceniumarch and extending the stage into the audience,boosts the orchestra seating from the average300 to 800, using fewer rows of seats.

There were fine, luxurious new trains, buses,steamships and airliners built and abuilding. De-signer Dreyfuss, who had conceived the NewYork Central’s first modern 20th Century trains,had many a super-modern ocean liner interioron the boards. Designer Teague’s cozy lounges,snack bars and dressing rooms were alreadyaloft in Boeing’s new Stratocruiser. Not even theU.S. toilet had been neglected. Thanks to De-signer Dreyfuss and the Crane Co., it was nowavailable in form-fitting shapes.

The New Frontiers. For all the work that hadbeen done, there still remained vast, unexploredregions of ugliness and inefficiency for the U.S.industrial designer to tackle. Designer Loewy lastweek summed up a few of the challenges:

“The world is filled with archaic objects —mail-boxes which look like alarm boxes, banks whichlook like places to break out of rather than placesto enter.

“Noise is a parasite. Anything noisy is poorlydesigned. And taxicabs! Why should you crawlinto a cab on your hands & knees and then beunable to get out of the deep seats once you getinto them? Subways are dirty, noisy, unattrac-tive. The American soda fountain is disgraceful;anyone who has ever smelled the midsummer-night stink of a sloppy soda fountain—decayedhamburger, sour milk, mustard and vanilla—cannever forget it. The same goes for a telephonebooth. Must one be crowded into a cramped,unventilated closet, use a mouthpiece which hasbeen breathed into by thousands of people? Whynot a two-way loudspeaker instead? LincolnSteffens advised his son, who was worryingabout what remained to be done, that nobodyhad yet made a faucet that didn’t leak. Well, itno longer leaks—but why not do somethingabout the faucet itself? Is it necessary?”