Today’s Google logo marks the 120th birthday of Raymond Loewy, the Father of Industrial Design.
The logo highlights the industrial designer’s work for Pennsylvania Railroad, where he designed a number of locomotives. While Loewy did not design the GG1 locomotive, he did create the streamlined, welded construction used on it and many future locomotives. It is this smooth design that Google has featured to blend with its own name.
Loewy began his career in 1928, designing the shell of the Gestetner mimeograph machine, a design that would last for 40 years. While working for Pennsylvania Railroad, he also designed passenger-car interiors and advertising materials.
His eye for streamlined design lead a revolution in the way American products looked, how they were packaged and branded. Loewy’s more famous work included: the Lucky Strike cigarette box, the slender Coca-Cola bottle, the Greyhound bus and logo, the Shell International logo, a line of Frigidaire products and the Studebaker Avanti, Champion and Starliner.
Born in Paris France, Loewy moved to New York City where he worked as a department store window decorator and fashion magazine illustrator during the early 1920s. Returning to France after his retirement in 1980, Loewy died in Monte Carlo in 1986.
In 1950 Cosmopolitan magazine wrote, “Loewy has probably affected the daily life of more Americans than any other man of his time.”
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