Google Doodle Honors Raymond Loewy

Image by Google

By Anne Cohen November 5, 2013

If you’ve had to search for anything on Google today (which, let’s face it, you probably have), you have most likely encountered the Google Doodle honoring Raymond Loewy:

Known as the “father behind industrial design,” he would have celebrated his 120th birthday today. Born in France in 1893 to a Viennese Jewish father and a French non-Jewish mother, Loewy spent most of his professional career in the U.S, where his firm — Raymond Loewy Associates — became a haven for Jewish artists, architects and other design professionals fleeing the Nazi advance in Europe.

But really, his products speak for themselves: the Lucky Strike cigarette pack, Coca Cola vending machines, Greyhound bus and the logos for Shell and Exxon — among many many other things — all came out of this man’s head.

In the words of Time Magazine, he ”made products irresistible at a time when nobody really wanted to pay for anything.”

Don’t we all know that feeling. Happy 120th birthday to the father of streamlined design!

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

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