Design History - 1930's
1930s Design
The rise of the industrial designer.
Introduction.
The 1930s meant the rise of the industrial design , especially in the USA.
In Europe, better and new design was linked with socialism, and the desire for design reform.
The idea that good design could change your life , stemming from an Arts and Crafts ideology. If people are surrounded by good design then they become good people.
The Arts and Crafts Movement in part was rebelling against industrial design which tried to improve on craftsmanship to create overly fussy mass produced goods.
The Arts & Crafts movement looked back to the golden era of master craftsmen and tradesmen guilds.
In Holland and Germany movements such as De Stijl and the Bauhuas, looked for a design which was not decorative, they wanted the idea of the form or shape of an object being dictated by its function……. Simple and plain but beautiful design.
Two strands of design appear under the heading of modernism in the 1930s:
Moderne or stream form influenced by Art Deco, using styling and decoration but in an ultra modern way using new materials and industrial techniques. Mass produced material.
Modernism simple and clean lines coming echoing form following function.
Designers were seen as low status, not as good as artists. Worked for industry.
Their worth though soon realised.
Design became an integral part of marketing any product.
In USA Independent design consultants first appeared.
The Wall Street Crash in 1929 caused a recession and lead to the American Depression.
It meant that where previously production and manufacturing were increasing year on year, this suddenly stopped.
Manufacturers had to compete against each other more to regain the market.
The National Recovery Act stabilized prices, therefore all prices were the same, the only way for manufacturers to compete
How could they make their products different.
and for consumers to choose was through design.
The struggle for a market share lead to the creation of the ist generation of independent design consultants : industrial designers.
American manufacturers saw that they could increase their sales by adding style to products.
Goods were now competing on appearance alone.
American designers not seen as artists or artisans like their European counterparts, they became more like business consultants.
The first generation of US design professionals included:
Raymond Loewy
Norman Bel Geddes
Walter Dorwin Teague
Henry Dreyfuss
They helped to take America out of recession.
They had experience in the advertising industry so they new a bit about what sells.
Walter Dorwin Teague
- Had been a graphic artist
- Began to look at 3D design in 1920s
- Commissioned by Eastman Kodak to design cameras & packaging.
Kodak Bantam Special – 1936
Small hand-held camera, reduced to basic elements for ease of use.
Horizontal stripes decorative AND functional - stops the lacquer chipping in big bits.
Teague created a design which looked good and was functional.
Other work included industrial machinery, buildings etc.
Texaco Service Station
He was also author of an important early book on industrial design , where he compared garages to ancient temples – the same status.
Raymond Loewy
- Trained as an engineer
- Born in france
- Absorbed the idea of American consumerism
- Loewy and his team put their hands to anything:
- Cars
- Toothpaste
- Lucky Strike cigarettes
- Beer
Some establishment art figures saw his designs as too brash and populist.
Coldspot Fridge 1935
This design raised the sales of this fridge dramatically.
Earlier fridges had been monumental in appearance.
Set on high curved legs <- like furniture
The cooling unit exposed on the top
Lowey encased the whole unit, in a plain white enamelled steel box with a flush door.
The interior was made to accommodate containers of different sizes, rather than just being a larder.
Had :
instant release ice cube trays.
Glass rolling pin
Annual sales soared from 15000 to 275000 in 5 years.
Can you think of a recent product which did the same thing.
The dyson vacuum cleaner???
Did the shell logo
Streamlining
Commercial competition in America led to a more professional approach to design in the US and a style Streamlining or stream form <- came to stand for dynamism and modernity.
Streamlining popularised by the visionary designer Norman Bel Geddes
It is seen as the style of industrial design in America in the 30s & 40s.
A streamlined shape or style was attached to industrial products for styke rather than function.
Hotchkiss Stapler - Orlo Heller – 1936
It was claimed to be the most beautiful stapler in the world.
A piece of pure styling, rather than mechanical function.
The form suggests speed, but it doesn’t need to move.
Seen as advantageous to use a form which was the emblem of speed and modernity and which doesn’t impair the efficiency of the object.
Streamlining became very fashionable, even to the extent that streamlined coffins were being made.
Origins of streamlining:
Go back to the 19th century studies of natural life & appreciation of organic forms, fishes / birds.
These ideas were applied to submarines and aircraft – long slender shape , pointed at the front and tapered at the rear to reduce drag.
By 1900 the ‘teardrop’ had been accepted as the form of least resisitance.
Was chosen for car design in 1914 by Italian car designers.
In 1921 Paul Jaray, an engineer at the zeppelin works began to test streamlined cars in a wind tunnel… this proved that the shape worked, increasing speed and efficiency.
In aircraft design aerodynamics and streamlining used.
The first commercial airliner to incorporate these was Boeing 247 in 1933, and in the same year the Douglas DC1 appeared.
Douglas DC1 – 1933
Wind tunnel testing was widely adopted for cars.
An attempt at radically changing cars design to increase efficiency & speed came with American architect and designer Richard Buckminster Fuller’s
Dymaxion Car No.3 1934
3 wheeled tear drop shaped vehicles.
Claimed that they had superior performance & a 50 % fuel saving at 50 mph
Failed Why?
Too extreme for US car manufacturers
Not functional …. Poor rear vision.
Some designers rejected streamlining:
Citroen 2CV – first produced in 1949
Simplicity made it popular and supply could not keep up with demand.
VW Beetle designed by Ferdinand Porche
streamlining
Railway design developed at this time to incorporate streamlining, most notably in Germany
German State Railway Train – 1937
Cinema design & modernism
Set design
Why???? Taken off in musicals
Interior_new_victoria_theatre_london
Set for lost_horizon_1937
Set for footlight_parade_1933
putting on the ritz
British Design
British Industrial Design achievement was mixed
No respect for industrial or product designers.
Helped by designers from Europe, Russia and Germany.
History from A&C
A number of committees set up to examine design:
Design & Industries Association (DIA)
Society of Industrial Artists
Many campaigners guided by A&C ideas, socialist thinking rather than the economic realities of industrial production.
Most manufacturers didn’t value designers much.
Series of exhibitions showing good design in the home.
Room Setting Gordon Russell ltd 1930s.
Usually room settings telling you what was good design, good design was seen as modernist to an extent.
Ideas of health & good living through design.
Population in UK couldn’t afford most products, most homes didn’t have a fridge until the 1950s & 60s…. not the same consumer market, more an art collector type of market.
No vacuum cleaners etc.
EKCO (E.K Cole Ltd) a plastics company was a pioneer of industrial design in 1930s.
It commissioned leading designers to produce wireless casings….. cheaper than before and a growth product.
Wells Coates
Misha Black
produced successful designs as well as designing for the properties of plastic, smooth, mouldable.
Radio Model AD 65 – Wells Coates for EKCO – 1934
Moulded Plastic radio
PEL (Practical Equipment Ltd) founded in 1931
Maunfactured tubular steel furniture on a large scale.
It was not welcomed much in the UK, still linked wood.
Office Desk – PEL -1930
Tubular steel chairs x2 1930s
The most accepted interpretation of modernism in Britain was Scandinavian Modern for example the work of Alvar Aalto
Why???
Table –Alvar Aalto - 1930s
Stacking Stools _ Alvar Aalto – 1930s
Chair Gerald Summers- 1930s
Alvar Aalto was a Finnish designer who began to experiment with furniture in the late 1920s.
He produced wooden almost rounded , biomorphic shapes, these were preferred over tubular steel….. so it was a combination of Bauhaus and organic ideas.
Reclining Chair Marcel Breuer
Chair - Eileen Gray
Graphics:
Incorporated modernist painting ideas, cubism, etc.
Posters increasingly important in industrialisation and commercialism.
Art Deco motifs used by poster artists such as AM Cassandre.
Cassandre posters x 5
Font quite decorative, use of travel imagery.
In Britain , graphics became much bolder, sans serif.
In UK the poster was the primary means by which products could be sold… no TV. Anything else???
Edward McKnight Kauffer was one of the main poster artists of his day.
An American who settled in London in 1914.
Saw himself as a painter until 1921 when his work as a poster designer took off.
Had worked for Frank Pick head of publicity at the Underground electric railway.
Poster McKnight Kauffer
John Gilroy Guiness Posters x 2
Paul Nash posters x2.
London Underground
1906 Frank Pick arrives at the Underground Group as assistant to Sir George Gibb, the new deputy chairman.
1908 Pick is appointed publicity manager of the Underground Group. The first version of the roundel ‘bar and circle’ symbol is introduced with a solid red circle.
1915 Edward McKnight Kauffer starts to design posters for the Underground Group.
1916 Pick commissions the typographer Edward Johnston to develop a super-legible typeface for use throughout the Underground – Johnston Sans.
1918 Edward Johnston begins work on the redesign of the roundel symbol used by the Underground Group since 1908.
1925 Architect Charles Holden starts work on the design of stations for the Morden line extension. Introduction of the first double-decker bus in London, the NS-type.
1928 Charles Holden designs a new headquarters for the Underground Group above St James Park tube station at 55 Broadway.
1930 Construction begins on the extension of the Piccadilly Line to the north and west.
1931 Sudbury Town opens as the first landmark Piccadilly Line station. Draughtsman Harry Beck starts work on the design of a diagrammatic map to guide passengers around the sprawling Underground network.
1933 Merger of the Underground Group with four other underground companies and numerous bus and tram companies to form the London Passenger Transport Board with Frank Pick as managing director. Edward Johnston’s roundel is adopted as the new network’s symbol and Harry Beck’s map is piloted as a leaflet.
Edward Johnstone’s Sansrif
Poster E. McKnight-Kauffer- 1924
Poster E. McKnight-Kauffer- 1930s
Poster E. McKnight-Kauffer- 1930s
Map – Stingemore 1920s
Map – Harry Beck – 1931
Bounds Green station -1932
Northfields st.
Southfields St
Carriage before design reforms
Carriage after design reforms.
Station
Roundal at Hammersmith with station furniture
