Streamliner: Raymond Loewy and Image-making in the Age of American Industrial Design

by John Wall

Overview

The true story of Raymond Loewy, whose designs are still celebrated for their unerring ability to advance American consumer taste.

Born in Paris in 1893 and trained as an engineer, Raymond Loewy revolutionized twentieth-century American industrial design. Combining salesmanship and media savvy, he created bright, smooth, and colorful logos for major corporations that included Greyhound, Exxon, and Nabisco. His designs for Studebaker automobiles, Sears Coldspot refrigerators, Lucky Strike cigarette packs, and Pennsylvania Railroad locomotives are iconic. Beyond his timeless designs, Loewy carefully built an international reputation through the assiduous courting of journalists and tastemakers to become the face of both a new profession and a consumer-driven vision of the American dream.

In Streamliner, John Wall traces the evolution of an industry through the lens of Loewy's eclectic life, distinctive work, and invented persona. How, he asks, did Loewy build a business while transforming himself into a national brand a half century before "branding" became relevant? Placing Loewy in context with the emerging consumer culture of the latter half of the twentieth century, Wall explores how his approach to business complemented—or differed from—that of his well-known contemporaries, including industrial designers Henry Dreyfuss, Walter Teague, and Norman Bel Geddes. Wall also reveals how Loewy tailored his lifestyle to cement the image of "designer" in the public imagination and why the self-promotion that drove Loewy to the top of his profession began to work against him at the end of his career. Streamliner is an important and engaging work on one of the longest-lived careers in industrial design.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421425740
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	539,439
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Wall, a former journalist, spent 23 years as a higher education public relations specialist at Penn State University and Juniata College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. New Shores: Creating a Biography on the Fly
Chapter 2. Portrait of the Young Engineer as an Artist
Chapter 3. The Artist (and Others) Shape the Things to Come
Chapter 4. Birth of a Salesman: Cold Calls, Clients, and Creativity
Chapter 5. Big Engines: Emergence of a Design Genius
Chapter 6. Constructing an Image while Building a Business
Chapter 7. Engines of Industry: Tractors, Tour Buses, and Ships
Chapter 8. Studebaker Beginnings: Internal Combustion, Internal Dissention, External Design
Chapter 9. The Starliner Coupe: Studebaker’s Breakthrough Design
Chapter 10. Avanti: Car Design Leaps Forward
Chapter 11. Becoming a Businessman: Building an Industry
Chapter 12. The Sales Curve Wanes
Chapter 13. The Long Road Down
Chapter 14. Legacy
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Jeffrey L. Meikle

Streamliner ably summarizes the career of Raymond Loewy. Relying on a wide range of sources, John Wall provides the most expansive summary yet of the industrial designer’s career. Distinguishing this account from others is its emphasis on Loewy’s most successful design—his own image and reputation as a recognizable brand.

Stephen Bayley

An elegant synthesis of Raymond Loewy's life and achievements, Streamliner is a splendid story and well told.

Mike Tharp

This meticulously researched biography of designer Raymond Loewy introduces us to an underappreciated genius—the man behind many of America’s most iconic product and logo designs. John Wall writes with elegant authority; it's clear from his cinematic and literary allusions that we are in the hands of a master prose stylist. Sit back and prepared to be informed and entertained.

Stanley Weintraub

With wry wit, John Wall's aptly titled and illustrated Streamliner covers Raymond Loewy's long twentieth century, from the Gestetner duplicator in the 1920s to the interior of Skylab for NASA. 'Pure form,' Wall explains about Loewy's stylish, self-branding industrial designs, 'does not move the metal.' With line and shape, Loewy in Wall's pages moves products big and small, from the Pennsy locomotive S-1, the Greyhound Scenicruiser, the Studebaker Starliner coupe, and the presidential Air Force One, to eye-catching corporate logos, the lipstick cylinder, and the Lucky Strike packet. A fascinating yet unhagiographic read.

Shelley Smith

My late aunt was a fashion illustrator and my first cousin is named Alfred Dreyfus. Symmetry? My good friend John T. Wall expertly reports and writes a fabulous book about one of the greatest inventors in history. Aunt Pat never designed a refrigerator, a car, or a train, but good lines are good lines. This is a delightful read.

Richard Cordray

Raymond Loewy shaped the iconic images of postwar America. His sleek elegance branded consumer goods, cars, trains, Air Force One, and his own relentlessly perfected personal celebrity. John Wall vividly brings this design genius to life as a flesh-and-blood master of how we see the modern world.

From the Publisher

An elegant synthesis of Raymond Loewy's life and achievements, Streamliner is a splendid story and well told.
—Stephen Bayley, author of Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything

Streamliner ably summarizes the career of Raymond Loewy. Relying on a wide range of sources, John Wall provides the most expansive summary yet of the industrial designer’s career. Distinguishing this account from others is its emphasis on Loewy’s most successful design—his own image and reputation as a recognizable brand.
—Jeffrey L. Meikle, author of Design in the USA

With wry wit, John Wall's aptly titled and illustrated Streamliner covers Raymond Loewy's long twentieth century, from the Gestetner duplicator in the 1920s to the interior of Skylab for NASA. 'Pure form,' Wall explains about Loewy's stylish, self-branding industrial designs, 'does not move the metal.' With line and shape, Loewy in Wall's pages moves products big and small, from the Pennsy locomotive S-1, the Greyhound Scenicruiser, the Studebaker Starliner coupe, and the presidential Air Force One, to eye-catching corporate logos, the lipstick cylinder, and the Lucky Strike packet. A fascinating yet unhagiographic read.
—Stanley Weintraub, author of Long Day's Journey into War: Pearl Harbor and a World at War—December 7, 1941

This meticulously researched biography of designer Raymond Loewy introduces us to an underappreciated genius—the man behind many of America’s most iconic product and logo designs. John Wall writes with elegant authority; it's clear from his cinematic and literary allusions that we are in the hands of a master prose stylist. Sit back and prepared to be informed and entertained.
—Mike Tharp, former Tokyo Bureau Chief, the Wall Street Journal and U.S. News & World Report

Raymond Loewy shaped the iconic images of postwar America. His sleek elegance branded consumer goods, cars, trains, Air Force One, and his own relentlessly perfected personal celebrity. John Wall vividly brings this design genius to life as a flesh-and-blood master of how we see the modern world.
—Richard Cordray, fomer Director of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

My late aunt was a fashion illustrator and my first cousin is named Alfred Dreyfus. Symmetry? My good friend John T. Wall expertly reports and writes a fabulous book about one of the greatest inventors in history. Aunt Pat never designed a refrigerator, a car, or a train, but good lines are good lines. This is a delightful read.
—Shelley Smith, ESPN SportsCenter

Editorial Reviews

This book adds another important chapter to the legendary work of the man who essentially created the field of industrial design, thus making the corpus of his career's work available to a new generation of readers.
—Ed Garten, Society of Automotive Historians Journal

From the Publisher

This book adds another important chapter to the legendary work of the man who essentially created the field of industrial design, thus making the corpus of his career's work available to a new generation of readers.

Society of Automotive Historians Journal - Ed Garten