Category: Society and people's livelihood

Problem description:

Raymond Loewy is a great master of industrial design and the designer of the "Coca-Cola" trademark !

Analysis:

At the beginning of the 20th century, when European modernist design exploration and experimentation were in full swing, American designers who had been unknown in the history of world design suddenly emerged and began to build enterprises. As a service-oriented industrial design movement, their designs are market-oriented. They have carried out a great modern design revolution in the most industrialized countries, and a group of world-class modern design masters have emerged, creating miracles of industrial design. , Raymond who founded the world's largest design company. Raymond Loeway (1889-1986) is one of them.

The first generation of American designers was different from the first generation of European designers. The background of the first generation of designers in Europe is basically that of architects. At the same time, they all have a solid higher professional education foundation. Most of them graduated from architecture majors and have long-term architectural design experience, such as Behrens and Georg in Germany. Lopez, Meese, Finland's Artur, Belgium's Wilder, etc.; the first generation of designers in the United States have different professional backgrounds. Many of them have been engaged in industries related to display design, directly related to marketing and sales, and education. The backgrounds are also mixed, and many people do not even have a formal higher education background. Their design objects are complex, their designs lack consideration of social factors, and they are good at market competition. They do not have much design theory or philosophy, nor do they have as many theoretical works as their European counterparts, but they have designed an astonishing number of products, packaging, and corporate images. Their purpose is to do design business, not to study the social function of design.

No matter how different they are from European designs, through their efforts, industrial design has finally become an important part of market promotion and market competition, and has been accepted by the American market and the American business community. Since then, industrial design has taken root in the United States.

As early as the 1920s, the United States was already the most industrialized country in the world. After Roosevelt's New Deal, especially after World War II, the United States became the most powerful economic power in the world. Under a highly developed commodity economy, linking design with the market is inevitable for the development of a machine-based industrial society. In this case, the force that restrained the development of early industrial design in the United States was not the idealism of European intellectuals or social democracy, but It's pure business competition.

In a society with the rapid development of the machine industry, everything is determined by the market competition mechanism. Although it is full of money, it has the undeniable magic power of regulating the relationship between supply and demand. The market mechanism determines what society needs and what it does not need. In order to meet the needs of the market, companies have to provide as many product styles, packaging, etc. as possible, and use various means to promote sales.

Raymond. Luo Wei is a highly commercial designer. He preaches that the most important thing in modern design is not the design philosophy and concept, but the economic benefits of design. This naturally aroused criticism from some design theorists. In this regard, Raymond. Luo Wei was noncommittal and further explained: "To me, the most beautiful curve is the curve of rising sales." As the first generation of industrial designers in the United States, Raymond. Luo Wei does not have any pedantic taste, nor does he have any so-called intellectual idealism. The purpose of the design is only for promotion, and is full of a strong commercial atmosphere of pragmatism. He highly professionalized and commercialized design, making his design company one of the largest design companies in the world in the 20th century.

Raymond. Luo Wei

Luo Wei was born in Paris, France, and moved to the United States after World War I. He is one of the important founders of American industrial design. He has been engaged in industrial product design, packaging design and graphic design (especially corporate image design) throughout his life. ), has participated in thousands of projects, from Coca-Cola bottles to NASA's "Skylab" program, from cigarette boxes to the interior of the "Concorde" aircraft. The content of the designs is extremely wide and represents the first It reflects the omnipotent characteristics of modern American industrial designers and achieved astonishing commercial benefits.

When Rowe first arrived in the United States, he was engaged in magazine illustration and window display design based on the market conditions and needs at the time. The turning point in his design was in 1929, when he accepted the commission from entrepreneur Gerstner to design a photocopier. The four legs of the copier were exposed. He adopted a comprehensive approach to simplifying the appearance and designed the originally arrogant machine into a machine with a strong sense of integrity and good functions. Because of its simple appearance, convenient mass production, overall shape and modern form, it has achieved good market results.

The "Cold Spot" refrigerator designed by him for Sears Department Store was a further improvement of his design. It basically changed the structure of the traditional refrigerator and turned it into a seamless white box, laying the foundation for The basic shape of modern refrigerator. Design adjustments were also made inside the refrigerator to meet functional requirements, causing sales of this type of refrigerator to rise sharply from 15,000 units to 275,000 units within five years. From Gerstner's copy machine to refrigerators, Pennsylvania Railroad locomotives, Coca-Cola glass bottles and corporate image design, etc., he became the most famous designer in the United States in just a few years.

In the 1930s, Luo Wei began to design locomotives, cars, ships and other means of transportation, introducing streamlines, which led to the streamlined style that became popular around the world. The streamlined style that emerged in the 1930s continued to be used after the war. There is a certain impact. At the 10th Exposition held in New York in 1939, Lowe exhibited a sample room of his "Industrial Designer's Studio". It not only introduced new concepts, but also formally proposed the profession of industrial designers for the first time, which had a positive effect on the professionalization process of industrial designers after the war.

Luo Wei was still engaged in design activities until shortly before his death in 1988. He had the longest design career among contemporary industrial designers. Rowe received numerous honors throughout his life. He was the first designer to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. Rowe played a very important role in promoting the development of American industrial design. His life is a microcosm and portrayal of the entire process from the beginning, development, peak and gradual decline of industrial design in the United States.

Design with feelers

Raymond. Rowe was deeply interested in the Bauhaus, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco movements originating from Europe, and absorbed a lot from them, but he never tried to establish his own design system or school, and he did not even like "streamlined styles" "This word is even similar to something related. It can be said that he never established his own design philosophy throughout his life and rarely devoted himself to the theoretical exploration of so-called design concepts. Instead, he was a master who designed entirely based on keen intuition. Despite this, he still has his own basic design principles, which are: concise, elegant or beautiful, economical and easy to maintain. The product must express its function through its shape. It goes without saying that this is also in line with its pragmatism.

Raymond. Luo Wei was keenly aware of the gap between the superior performance and poor appearance of large American industrial products, and determined his own design thinking direction. He believes that good functions should have good appearance, and good appearance can better reflect its superior functions. For him, the perfect unity of function and appearance is the only means to achieve the purpose of use. More importantly, a good appearance can also promote product sales and reflect its commercial value. Therefore, he determined that product design was a potentially huge market. Since the 1920s, he has been committed to the design and development of the appearance of modern machinery and large-scale industrial products, and has made this his lifelong goal.

Modern media created Raymond. Luo Wei

It should be pointed out that the so-called Raymond. Luo Wei's design is not his personal design, but an overall design. He began to establish his own design company in the 1930s. At that time, the business included three aspects: transportation design, industrial product design, and packaging design. After that, the company continued to expand in size and the number of people continued to increase, reaching its peak in the 1950s and 1960s. The number of employees reached two hundred. The business scope and scale have expanded, but the product design works of all designers in the company, including packaging, logos, and image planning plans, must be signed with the "Luo Wei Design" logo and produced in his own name. Later, his employees separated and established their own design firm, but still used his name to carry out related design activities. Of course, some employees have expressed ***, but through this management and operation method, the popularity of the design company has been greatly improved.

In addition, as an excellent designer, Raymond. Luo Wei has unique management experience. He is well behaved and cautious in his words and deeds. At the same time, he is good at creating a humorous and happy atmosphere in the company, perfectly establishing the image of a European gentleman. He is well aware of the power of the news media and knows that to succeed in the highly commercialized society of the United States, one must rely on the propaganda and public opinion role of the news media. Therefore, he frequently appears in various news media, including newspapers, magazines, and television, and gives speeches to increase the visibility of himself and the company as much as possible, making his name a household name. In addition, his book "Don't Leave the Good Alone" has been translated into many languages ??and sold well in Europe and the United States. It opened the way for his design activities and received good publicity effects. It can be said that it spares no effort and no expense in public relations, which is also an important reason for its success.

Raymond. Luo Wei has a lofty and profound design vision. Through a series of efforts, Luo Wei Design Office became the design office with the best economic strength and economic benefits in the world by the 1980s, and became the largest design company in the world.

If the greatest contribution of the Germans to design is to establish the theory and education system of modern design, conduct a large number of experiments, and regard social interests as the purpose of design education and design itself, then the American modern The most significant contribution of design to world design is the development and professionalization of industrial design, completing the commercialization of modern design. Naturally, as one of the founders of modern industrial design in the United States, Raymond. Rowe really deserves a lot of credit.