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BY RAYMOND LOEWY
"It all must start with an inspired,
spontaneous idea."
"The main goal is not to complicate the already difficult life
of the consumer."
"I can claim to have made the daily life of the 20th Century
more beautiful."
"For our appointment, I brought along sheets of colored paper,
scissors, razor blades and rubber cement. Since his desk at
the Oval Office was relatively small, we just sat on the floor
cutting out colored paper shapes and working out various ideas.
We had three sessions lasting about an hour each and he approved
a design quite similar to one of my early suggestions." - describing
his working relationship with JFK
"I believe most in educated intuition, in what you get through
profound experience."
"Today every city, town, or village is affected by it. We have
entered the Neon Civilization and become a plastic world.. It
goes deeper than its visual manifestations, it affects moral
matters; we are engaged, as astrophysicists would say, on a
decaying orbit."
"I alienated the automotive industry by saying that cars should
be lightweight and compact.. I'd also kill chrome forever, or
any other applied junk."
"It's shape is aggressively female - a quality that in merchandise,
as in life, sometime transcends functionalism."
-- referring
to the Coca-Cola bottle shape
"Jukeboxes on wheels, aesthetic aberrations that masked
the workings of the machine beneath the layers of tawdry flash."
-- commenting on Detroit chrome
"Junky stuff is consumer murder."
"Form, which should be the clean-cut expression of mechanical
excellence, has become sensuous and organic."
"I believe one should design for the advantage of the largest
mass of people, first and always. That takes care of ideologies
and sociologies. I think one also should try to elevate the
aesthetic level of society. And to watch quality control always,
while insisting others do, too."
". I waited for the S-1 to pass through at full speed. I stood
on the platform and saw it coming from the distance at 120 miles
per hour. It flashed by me like a steel thunderbolt, the ground
shaking under me, in a blast of air that almost sucked me into
its whirlwind. Approximately a million pounds of locomotive
were crashing through near me. I felt shaken and overwhelmed
by an unforgettable feeling of power, by a sense of pride at
what I had helped to create. I had, after all, contributed something
to a great nation that had taken me in and that I loved so deeply.
And I had come a long, happy way myself from my start in fashion
advertising. I had found my way of life."
"Standing somewhere between New York and Philadelphia,
I don't know where, and seeing that engine come at high speed,
shaking the ground. It was a thrill, unforgettable. There are
great the great moments in a man's life..."
"As an American citizen who still loves his native country,
France, it is heartwarming to see that this country appreciates
the beauty and taste that all Frenchmen prize."
"Industrial design keeps the customer happy, his client in the
black and the designer busy."
". design, vitalized and simplified, will make the comforts
of civilized life available to an ever-increasing number of
Americans."
"Between two products equal in price, function and quality,
the one with the most attractive exterior will win."
"I once said that the most difficult things to design are the
simplest. For instance, to improve the form of a scalpel or
a needle is extremely difficult, if not impossible. To improve
the appearance of a threshing machine is easy. There are so
many components on which one can work."
"There is a frantic race to merchandise tinsel and trash under
the guise of 'modernism.'"
". we know that logic alone does not sell automobiles, so its
immediate appeal is emotional; sheer elegance and design finesse,
the wish to feel its slender curves, to love that car, to be
known as its discriminating owner."
"As a boy I had liked both drawing and physics, and I always
abhorred the role of being a spectator. In 1908, when I was
15, I designed, built and flew a toy model airplane which won
the then-famous James Gordon Bennett Cup.. By 16 I had discovered
that design could be fun and profitable, and this lesson has
never been lost on me."
"We didn't realize what the repercussions might be decades later..
America became flooded by cheap, sleazy junk bought by consumers
who saw gaudiness as a mark of advanced 'futuristic' design."
"I sought excitement and, taking chances, I was all ready to
fail in order to achieve something large."
". in many cases it is hypocrisy for the designer to talk of
'functional design' when they have become too fat with too many
facilities, too many materials which they use wastefully."
"It would seem that more than function itself, simplicity is
the deciding factor in the aesthetic equation. One might call
the process beauty through function and simplification."
"Style for the sake of style alone will have less meaning to
the consumer than value. An interruption of the spiral created
by boosting sales from year to year with false inducements of
style, bulk and flash gives design a new lease on life. Aesthetic
beauty will be the direct result of careful planning and precision
manufacturing."
"A designer must always think about the unfortunate production
engineer who will have to manufacture what you have designed;
try to understand his problems."
"The most beautiful curve is a rising sales graph."
"I believe most in educated intuition."
"It all starts with an inspired, spontaneous idea."
"Junky stuff is consumer murder."
"Good design is not an applied veneer."
"Beauty through function and simplification."
"It's a simple exercise; a little logic, a little taste, and the will to cooperate."
"First and foremost we apply our creativity to generating ideas."
"More than function itself, simplicity is the deciding factor in the aesthetic equation."
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