Designers to know

Where

Born in Paris; worked in New York from 1919

When

1893 to 1986

Who

French-born American industrial designer

Key works

Studebaker Avanti car (1962); Lucky Strike cigarette pack; Shell and Exxon logos; Greyhound bus interiors; Coca-Cola vending machines; Air Force One colours

Loewy is often called a father of industrial design because he worked on almost everything: trains, cars, buses, fridges, packaging and logos. In 1949 he was on the cover of Time magazine. This car is the Studebaker Avanti, launched in April 1962, whose smooth, grille-less nose was shaped by his team. His rule for new products was MAYA, "most advanced, yet acceptable": go as far ahead as buyers will still accept. His streamlined trains are in the design movements note.

Where

Their office in Venice, Los Angeles

When

Chair designed 1945 to 1946; Charles 1907 to 1978, Ray 1912 to 1988

Who

American husband-and-wife design team

Made with

Moulded plywood with rubber shock mounts

Key works

LCW chair (1946); Eames Lounge Chair (1956); Powers of Ten film (1977); the India Report (1958)

During the Second World War the Eameses made moulded plywood leg splints for the US Navy, and they used the same skill to bend plywood into chairs. The LCW is a seat and a back, each a gently curved plywood panel, held on a plywood spine. They went on to make the leather Eames Lounge Chair (in the design movements note) and short films such as Powers of Ten. For India they matter even more: their India Report of 1958 led to NID (see the Design in India note).

Where

Braun, Germany

When

Born 1932; joined Braun in 1955 and led its design from 1961

Who

German industrial designer

Key works

SK 4 radio-phonograph (1956, with Hans Gugelot); 606 Universal Shelving System for Vitsoe (1960); ET66 calculator (1987, with Dietrich Lubs)

Rams spent his career at the German electrical company Braun, making radios, shavers, clocks and calculators calm, plain and easy to use. His motto is "less, but better", and he set down ten principles of good design (below). The ET66 calculator shown here has domed buttons and a single yellow key for "equals". Apple's designers openly admired his work: the iPhone's calculator app was modelled on the ET66, and the first iPod is often compared with his Braun T3 pocket radio.

Where

Paris; made by Alessi, Italy

When

Born 1949; Juicy Salif 1990

Who

French designer

Made with

Cast and polished aluminium

Key works

Juicy Salif (1990); Louis Ghost chair for Kartell; rooms in the French president's Élysée Palace (1983)

Starck designs everything from toothbrushes and chairs to hotels and yachts. The Juicy Salif began as squid sketches on a restaurant napkin, drawn while he squeezed lemon over a plate of squid, and the Italian firm Alessi made it in 1990. Critics say it is messy to use, yet it sits in museums such as MoMA in New York and the V&A in London. People argue over it because it puts a striking shape ahead of how well it works. His Louis Ghost chair for Kartell turned an old French armchair shape into one piece of clear moulded plastic.

Where

Born in London; worked at Apple in California

When

Born 1967; at Apple from 1992 to 2019

Who

British industrial designer

Key works

iMac G3 (1998); iPod (2001); iPhone (2007); iPad (2010); Apple Watch (2015)

Ive joined Apple in 1992 and became its head of design after Steve Jobs returned. His first big success was the iMac of 1998, an all-in-one computer in see-through coloured plastic at a time when computers were beige boxes. He then led the design of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, and was Apple's chief design officer from 2015. In 2019 he left to start the design firm LoveFrom with the Australian designer Marc Newson, whose aluminium Lockheed Lounge chair has set auction records for a living designer.

Where

Japan; made for Muji

When

Born 1956; CD player 1999

Who

Japanese product designer

Key works

Wall-mounted CD player for Muji (1999); Infobar mobile phones for KDDI

Fukasawa noticed that a spinning CD looks like the blades of a kitchen extractor fan, so he made a CD player that hangs on the wall and starts when you pull its cord, just like the fan. It is in the collection of MoMA in New York. His idea of designing "Without Thought" means shaping objects around the things people already do without thinking. He has advised the Japanese no-brand shop Muji since 2002.

Where

New York

When

1914 to 1996; IBM logo 1956, striped version 1972

Who

American graphic designer

Key works

Logos for IBM, UPS, ABC, Westinghouse and Steve Jobs's company NeXT

Rand believed a logo should be simple enough to remember after one look. He designed IBM's logo in 1956 and added the stripes in 1972, which make the heavy letters look lighter and more lively. IBM is usually printed in one colour; this coloured version is one of its variants. He also taught graphic design at Yale University.

Where

Los Angeles

When

1920 to 1996; this poster 1959

Who

American graphic designer and film-maker

Key works

Title sequences for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960); the AT&T globe logo; the United Airlines tulip

Before Bass, film posters usually showed painted scenes and stars' faces. He used a single bold symbol instead, made of cut paper, like the broken body on this poster. He also turned a film's opening credits into a short film of their own, with moving shapes and type, for directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Otto Preminger. Later his firm designed company logos used for decades.

Where

New York

When

1929 to 2020; logo for the 1977 tourism campaign

Who

American graphic designer

Key works

I Love NY logo; Bob Dylan poster (1966); co-founder of Push Pin Studios (1954) and New York magazine

When New York State wanted to bring tourists back in the 1970s, Glaser sketched this logo with a red crayon in the back of a taxi, and he did the work for free. The heart stands for the word "love", so the logo reads as a little sentence of letters and a picture. It has been copied all over the world. In 2009 he was the first graphic designer to receive the US National Medal of Arts.

Where

Born in Milan; worked in New York

When

1931 to 2014; map 1972

Who

Italian designer, working with his wife Lella Vignelli

Key works

New York subway map (1972); subway signs with Unimark; American Airlines logo (1967)

Vignelli's 1972 map shows the subway as a clean diagram: every line has its own colour and runs straight across, straight up or at 45 degrees, and stations sit evenly spaced. It ignored the real shapes of streets and parks, so many riders found it confusing, and it was replaced in 1979 by a map closer to real geography. Like Harry Beck's London Underground map of 1933, it chose clarity over true distances, and designers still admire it. Vignelli also worked on the subway's signs with his firm Unimark.

Where

Ulm and Munich, Germany

When

1922 to 1991; Munich Olympics 1972

Who

German graphic designer

Key works

Pictograms and design of the Munich 1972 Olympics; Lufthansa's identity; the Rotis typeface

Aicher helped found the Ulm School of Design, which opened in 1953 and taught a strict, scientific kind of design. As lead designer of the Munich Olympics, his team drew sports pictograms from a grid, using only straight lines at 45 and 90 degrees, and gave the Games a fresh colour scheme of blues, greens, orange and silver. Tokyo 1964 had used Olympic pictograms first, but Munich's clean style shaped the signs later used at airports and stations. Each Games now draws its own set: UCEED 2017 showed Beijing 2008's, whose figures look brushed in ink to match its logo.

Where

Munich; released by the Bauer type foundry, Frankfurt

When

1878 to 1956; Futura 1927

Who

German type designer and teacher

Renner built Futura from simple geometric shapes, a circle for the o, triangles for the A and the v, and straight strokes of even thickness, in the modern spirit of the Bauhaus years. Bauer sold it as "the typeface of our time". It became one of the best-loved typefaces of the 20th century and was a favourite of the film director Stanley Kubrick.

Where

Born in Switzerland; worked in Paris

When

1928 to 2015; Univers 1957; Frutiger 1976

Who

Swiss type designer

Key works

Univers (1957); OCR-B (for machines to read); Frutiger (1976); Avenir (1988)

Frutiger's Univers came out in 1957, the same year as Helvetica, in a full family of weights and widths numbered on a chart, so designers could pick exactly the version they needed. Later he designed the letters for the signs of Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris, made to be read quickly, from far away and at an angle. Released for print in 1976 as Frutiger, it is now used on Swiss road signs and in many sign systems and logos.

Where

England; released by Monotype

When

1882 to 1940; Gill Sans 1928

Who

English sculptor, stone carver and type designer

Key works

Gill Sans (1928); Perpetua; Joanna

Gill had helped his teacher Edward Johnston, who drew the lettering of the London Underground in 1916. Gill Sans grew out of that alphabet, but its capitals follow the proportions of Roman inscriptions carved in stone. A year after its release a British railway, the LNER, used it on all its posters and timetables, and it appeared on Penguin book covers and, much later, in the BBC's logo. A 1989 biography by Fiona MacCarthy, based on Gill's own diaries, revealed that he had sexually abused two of his daughters, so his work is now discussed alongside that history.

Where

Paris

When

1883 to 1971; this suit early 1960s

Who

French fashion designer

Key works

Jersey dresses (1910s); Chanel No. 5 perfume (1921); the little black dress (1926); the Chanel suit

Chanel started as a hat maker in Paris in 1910. She made women's clothes from jersey, a soft knitted cloth then used mainly for men's underwear, and cut them simple and comfortable to move in. In 1926 Vogue printed her short, plain black dress and called it "Chanel's Ford", meaning it would be as common as Ford's cars. After 1954 her boxy suits with braided edges, like this one, became her signature.

Where

Born in Hiroshima; worked in Tokyo and Paris

When

1938 to 2022; this Rhythm Pleats piece 1990; Pleats Please from 1993

Who

Japanese fashion designer

Made with

Polyester, pleated by heat and pressure

Key works

Pleats Please (1993); A-POC, "a piece of cloth" (from 1998); Steve Jobs's black turtlenecks

Miyake survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a boy and later became known for clothes made with new technology. Normally cloth is pleated first and then cut. He did the opposite: the garment is cut and sewn about two and a half to three times too big, then pressed between paper in a heated press, which leaves permanent pleats. The clothes are light, pack flat, never need ironing and stretch with the body. His A-POC clothes were cut from a single tube of machine-knitted cloth.