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America is full 
of the work of 
Raymond Loewy. 
He once jokingly
described himself 
as an industrial 
beautician, and 
he said his aim 
was to close the 
gap "between the 
quality of American 
products and 
their clumsy, ugly 
appearance"
#
When Loewy 
fought in the first 
world war he 
redesigned the 
French Army's 
standard-issue 
uniform because 
he thought it was 
ugly. But his first 
design was for a 
model airplane 
driven by rubber 
bands, which he 
patented when he 
was 15 years old
#
The immigrant 
Loewy had a 
talent for coming 
up with designs 
which captured 
the essence of his 
adopted country. 
Many of them went 
on to symbolise 
the American way
of life. Among 
Raymond Loewy's
clients were Coke, 
Lucky Strike and 
the Greyhound Bus 
company 
#
Loewy designed 
the logos for two 
oil companies, 
Shell and Exxon. 
His Shell logo of 
1971 was a 
Loewy classic, 
simple and 
striking. In 1992 
Shell changed 
Loewy's bold 
colors to give the 
company a softer 
image for a more 
environmentally 
conscious age
#
In the Thirties 
Loewy spent 
$18,000 of his 
own money on 
the design of a 
streamlined 
sports car. This 
concept was later 
developed for 
Studebaker as 
the Avanti. It
went into pro-
duction in 1961
#
The Greyhound 
bus, like the 
Avanti car, 
epitomized 
Loewy's desire to 
streamline and 
simplify in a time 
when other 
designers were 
using what he 
regarded as 
unnecessary 
embellishment 
and decoration
#
Loewy's chief 
contribution to 
the 1967 Skylab 
project was its 
large porthole. He 
also designed a 
triangular table 
for the three 
astronauts, and 
to ease the bore-
dom of weight-
less space travel 
he came up with 
3-dimensional 
billiards and 
floating darts
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