Streamline Design In America

By the late 1920s the rapid increase in North American consumer spending seen after the First World War was in decline.1 Recognizing that they were potentially facing impending financial ruin, manufacturers of commercial goods responded by relegating the task of revamping their selling tactics to their marketing departments, which quickly ascertained that for the goods they were promoting to succeed in the marketplace they must first appeal to the taste of the consumer.

Women of the era were experiencing unprecedented enhanced consumer power with fewer children to look after, increased mobility due to the automobile, and more free time in which to shop as a result of the introduction of labor-saving, domestic electrical appliances. They were quite logically identified as a likely target market to which business should direct its attention. An advertisement of the period in Printer's Ink Magazine reflects this awareness by stating that, "the proper study of mankind is man... but the proper study of markets is woman."2

The challenge was therefore identified as that of feminizing mass-produced material culture by emphasizing those aspects of visual culture which were more traditionally linked with feminine, rather than masculine cultural values; or to render as feminine an object usually perceived of as masculine.3 Whereas previous emphasis had been placed on the utilitarian, as opposed to aesthetic characteristics of household appliances, there was now an acknowledged need to introduce an element of fashion or style in these goods where style is defined as the particular inflection of an object that best communicates the taste values of the consumer.4

Raymond Loewy was one of several young industrial designers to take up the challenge. Drawing from his background in the fast-developing field of advertising, he set out to bring his Depression-era market faceto-face with modernity by utilizing an aesthetic that pointed to the future and prosperity at a time when the economic situation was less than optimistic.5 In accomplishing this Loewy took direct inspiration from the larger forms of mechanized society, the very transportation machines that defined modern experience such as the locomotive.6

"[Women] must, like men, marry machinery."7

- Henry Adams

By as early as the year 1865 efforts had been undertaken by American inventor S. R. Calthrop to diminish the atmospheric resistance of locomotives by eliminating as far as possible all projections, unifying the many components into one articulated entity of smooth, unbroken steel.8 Locomotives thereafter became characterized by their sleek profiles and low, rounded forms.

This concept was rediscovered by Loewy and his contemporaries and employed as a selling-tool to every manner of consumer product available. Disguising the separateness of individual component parts by laying a level plane over disjointed elements and creating an impression of visual unity was determined to be a successful solution to the problem of introducing beauty and style into a hitherto standardized utility object. Automobiles, domestic appliances such as the suction sweeper (vacuum), and even pencil sharpeners thus found their own feminized popular aesthetic in the style that came to be known simply as "streamlining", providing a significant means through which women could encounter modernity.9

On the practice of employing streamlining as a way of marketing items which were never designed with speed or motion of any kind in mind, Walter Dorwin Teague wrote in 1939,

"...one reason why we are streamlining... things that will never move and

have no excuse for being streamlined in the sense that they need to be

adapted to the flow of air currents is simply because of the dynamic quality

of the line which occurs in streamline forms, and it is characteristic of our age."10

These typically monochromatic, seamless, organically-shaped objects with their chrome steel highlights evoked simultaneously a world of advanced technology and of aesthetic minimalism and sensuousness which was as much about fantasy as it was about the realities of living in the first half of the twentieth century.11

The demand for inexpensive goods in the years of the Great Depression inspired a frenzy of research into the application of new materials such as plastics which had been developed during the First World War in response to a shortage of natural resources. The production process and structural limitations of these

materials dictated an emphasis on rounded contours and had a major influence on the finished forms of goods produced.12 Plastic housings conveniently also performed the dual functions of concealing the potentially hazardous and unappealing inner workings of a mechanized product from the eye and of providing a new and recognizable visual identity for the object. Goods like the toaster could now be instantly recognized for what they were rather than deciphered from a jumble of parts. The transition to plastics thus facilitated the emergence of the streamlined shape.13

Streamlined style was widely accepted by the public and became extremely popular with designers and manufacturers nation-wide. The previously fashionable surface decoration of the international styles of Art Nouveau and Art Deco were efficiently replaced by the dominant aesthetic of streamlining which in turn became increasingly simplistic and stark as designers strived to strip bare all extraneous detail and embellishment in favor of a form as attractive to the hand as to the eye.14

"Beauty, like truth, is never so glorious as when it goes

its plainest."15

- Laurence Sterne

It became so popular and commercially viable in fact that by the late 1930s articles began to appear on the evils inherent in applying streamlining in the design (or redesign) of a product as a style purported to be superior to all others.

For all their rationale and good intention however, the decisions which served to define and validate the role of female consumerism and that played a fundamental role in contemporary product design were predominantly economic in nature. Streamlining came to be as a solution to the problem of how to sell the same goods to a saturated market.

Initiated as an effort to bring unity and logic to the production of machine-made objects, manufacturers soon realized that any redesign of a product had sales appeal; the market would simply accept whatever it was offered.16 As a new design had the effect of making older versions appear inferior, the periodic redesign of products began as an effective way to stimulate sales whether or not changes in physical function had been implemented. The concept of planned obsolescence came into being.

To maximize the productive capacity of industry and thereby increase profit margins, consumers were encouraged to use and discard still useful goods as rapidly as possible to make way for newer models. At the expense of thoughtful design and ultimately the environment, industrial designers redefined their role as that of designing for profit.

Endnotes

1 Penny Sparke. As Long As It's Pink, London: Harper Collins Pub., 1995, p.131

2 Ibid., p.129

3 Ibid., p.129

4 Wendy Kaplan, ed. Designing Modernity, New York: Thames & Hudson, 1995, p.165

5 Ibid., p.162

6 Ibid., p.165

7 Ibid., p.165

8 Herwin Schaefer. Nineteenth Century Modern, New York: Praeger Pub., 1970, p.42

9 Penny Sparke. As Long As Its Pink, London: Harper Collins Pub., 1995, p.136

10 Martin Greif. Depression Modern, New York: Universe Books, 1975, p.36

11 Penny Sparke. As Long As Its Pink, London: Harper Collins Pub., 1995, p.125

12 Penny Sparke. An Intro. To Design & Culture in the 20th Century, New York: Harper p.129

13 Ibid., p.135

14 Wendy Kaplan, ed. Designing Modernity, New York: Thames & Hudson, 1995,

15 Martin Greif. Depression Modern, New York: Universe Books, 1975, p.19

p.165

Row, 1986,

16 Edmund Feldman. Varieties of Visual Experience, New York: Harry N. Abrams,

1987, p.111

Bibliography

1. Conway, Hazel, ed. Design History: A student's Handbook. London: Unwin Hyman Ltd., 1987.

2. Feldman, Edmund. Varieties of Visual Experience. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1987.

3. Greif, Martin. Depression Modern: The 30s Style in America. New York: Universe Books, 1975.

4. Kaplan, Wendy, ed. Designing Modernity. New York: Thames & Hudson Inc., 1995.

5. Plummer, K. "The Streamline Moderne", in Art In America, LXII (Jan.-Feb. 1874)

6. Schaefer, Herwin. Nineteenth Century Modern. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970.

7. Sembach, K.-J. Into the Thirties. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995.

8. Sparke, Penny. As Long As It's Pink. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995.

9. Sparke, Penny. An Intro. to Design and Culture in the 20th Century. New York: Harper and Row, 1986.