American hegemony and challenges from abroad

American designers continued to be at the forefront of industrial design, at least in its initial postwar manifestation. Some major examples include advertising and packaging designer Walter Landor, who established Landor Associates (1941), a design consultancy renowned for creating brand identity and corporate imagery; industrial designer Charles Butler, a protégé of Raymond Loewy who in the 1950s and ’60s designed British airliner interiors, from Viscounts for Capital Airlines (1955) to the Concorde (1969 and later); Harley Earl, the creator of the design department at General Motors who was responsible for putting the fins on Cadillacs (1948 and later) and who also developed the Corvette sports car (1952–53); and Charles and Ray Eames, the husband-and-wife design team that popularized molded plywood furniture in the 1940s and ’50s. The design impact of the Eameses extended throughout American society, in part because they did not limit themselves to the design of furniture and furnishings. They created a number of important educational films, most notably Powers of Ten (1977), and they designed a number of significant public exhibitions, such as “Mathematica” (1961), that were shown throughout the nation and within World’s Fair pavilions. Other designers who made important contributions to American industry in the postwar era include Eliot Noyes, an employee of Norman Bel Geddes who in the 1950s and ’60s redesigned IBM’s product line, most notably the Selectric typewriter (1961); Richard Ten Eyck, who designed Cessna airplanes and Hesston tractors and is best known for designing the Vornado fan (1945–59, with 1988 and later variants) for the O.A. Sutton Corporation; and John Frassanito, a former Loewy employee who designed Datapoint computers in the early 1970s and spacecraft for NASA beginning in the mid-1980s.

Museums, both large and small, often showcased the work of such designers; the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y., for instance, organized the early exhibition “Good Design Is Your Business” in 1947, and MoMA displayed the best of design in its “Good Design” exhibitions (1950 and later). Also in those decades there was an expansion of the design curriculum within art and architectural schools. The Hungarian-born Bauhaus artist and educator László Moholy-Nagy established the trendsetting New Bauhaus in Chicago (1937) and subsequently developed the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology (1944). It and similar schools began to train the next generation of American industrial designers.

Industrial design flourished in postwar Europe as well. Even in war-ravaged West Germany, design was given a boost by the establishment of the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, or the Ulm Design School (1953–68), which was often considered a successor to the Bauhaus. One of its founders was the typeface designer Otl Aicher, a corporate-branding specialist, noted author of graphic standards manuals for his clients, and designer whose clients included Lufthansa and Munich’s transportation authority. Aicher’s contributions to the development of postwar graphic design and corporate identity may have even surpassed those of the legendary Herbert Bayer, the Bauhaus typeface designer who introduced a surrealistic collage style into periodicals of the 1930s and who continued his work in the United States with Gropius at Harvard after leaving Germany in 1938. After World War II, Bayer continued typeface innovations while helping design aficionado and industrialist Walter Paepcke to develop Aspen, Colo., as a resort and think tank location with the establishment of the Aspen Institute (1950). West Germany produced other great designers, such as Dieter Rams, who, beginning in 1955, was the creative force behind all Braun electric appliances, which epitomized the clean, minimalist look of modern German design.

After World War II, Japanese design benefited from an active reconnection to Europe and the United States. Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), formed in 1949, sent Japanese industrial designers for study abroad in an effort to upgrade the quality of the country’s products, which were considered, in the immediate postwar era, to be cheap imitations of Western products. Under this program Takuo Hirano—founder of one of Japan’s largest industrial design firms, Hirano & Associates (1960)—studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. In 1957 MITI established the Good Design Awards (formerly the Good Design Selection System), or G-Marks. The G-Mark award system consists of an annual juried competition of new consumer products, with awards given for products within various categories and one grand prize that spans all. Awards are based on aesthetics of design as well as a product’s features related to safety, function, value, and even post-sales consumer service. Such measures helped Japan become a worldwide leader in the export of home electronics and automobiles in the 1980s. Other countries also developed in terms of consumer product design after World War II. In Denmark, for instance, architect Arne Jacobsen established an international reputation with his iconic plywood-and-steel Ant chair (1951), and Jacob Jensen designed minimalist Bang & Olufsen stereo equipment from 1963 to 1993. In England the economical Mini automobile was created in 1959 by Morris Motors chief engineer Alec Issigonis and became an icon of the 1960s. The French architect Jean Prouvé created Modernist wood-and-metal furniture before and after the war. But perhaps the most remarkable postwar industrial design occurred in Italy.

In the second half of the 20th century, Italian design was showcased for American museum audiences in exhibitions ranging from “Italy at Work” (1950) at the Art Institute of Chicago to “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” (1972) at the MoMA in New York. In the former exhibition, Italian design captured the public’s imagination with its sensual curvilinear forms; in the latter, museum visitors were shown the flexibility of modular furniture. Examples of great Italian product design created during the middle decades of the 20th century include Corradino d’Ascanio’s peppy Vespa motor scooters (1946–48); Carlo Mollino’s sensuous Arabesque table (1950); architect Vico Magistretti’s lacquered aluminum Eclisse lamp (1965; also called the Eclipse lamp), which resembles a space helmet; artist Joe Colombo’s innovative molded-plastic furniture, such as his 4867 Chair (1965) and popular Boby trolley (1970); Mario Bellini’s calculators for the office-equipment company Olivetti beginning in the 1960s and continuing through the 1980s; Alessandro Mendini’s work in design publishing as well as kitchen-accessory design for the Italian design factory Alessi in the 1980s; and architect Ettore Sottsass’s lifelong contributions to design for Olivetti (1958–80) and his founding in 1980 of the Memphis group of architects and designers. With its tendency to imbue its creations with whimsical historical references, this group was the epitome of postmodern design. Sottsass’s work within the group includes his multicoloured Carlton room divider (1981).