“Streamlining Everything”: Design, Market Research, and the Postwar “American” World of Goods
“Streamlining Everything”: Design, Market Research, and the Postwar “American” World of Goods
In their quest for perpetual innovation, postwar design professionals took an engineering approach to their creative work, mirroring the notion of “creative research” invoked by research consultants such as Dichter and Politz. This chapter traces the emergence of increasingly integrative conceptions of consumer design focusing on the examples of two prominent design consultancies headed by European immigrants. Raymond Loewy’s design studio was one of the leading consulting firms of mid-twentieth century; its service portfolio signified like few others the pervasiveness of industrial design efforts after the war. Based on the West coast, the design firm of Walter Landor was both smaller and initially more focused on the food and beverage industry, making it an ideal case study for the postwar development of package design and the rise of the supermarket as the premier retail environment. Both Landor and Loewy shared a focus on research-driven design and both championed more integrative design approaches centered on brand and corporate identities.
Keywords: History of Design Studios, Researched Design, Raymond Loewy, Product and Brand identites, Walter Landor
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
