April 15, 2009
Ettore Sottsass
Architect + Product Designer (1917-2007) 
ETTORE SOTTSASS (1917-2007) was a grandee of late 20th century Italian design. Best known as the founder of the early 1980s Memphis collective, he also designed iconic electronic products for Olivetti, as well as beautiful glass and ceramics.
Wherever he went, Ettore Sottsass carried a camera to photograph anything that caught his eye. Doors, temples, kitchens, billboards: nothing escaped him. This was a man who took 1,780 photographs on a twelve day trip to South America, who toyed with publishing a book consisting of pictures of walls and for years photographed every hotel room in which he had slept with a woman. Keep reading →
April 9, 2009
ALAN FLETCHER 
Graphic Designer (1931-2006)
The Design Museum is saddened at the news of the death of Alan Fletcher on 21 September 2006. Alan Fletcher had already made a very generous donation of his archive to the museum, and was very much involved in the planning of a retrospective exhibition here. The exhibition Alan Fletcher: fifty years of graphic work (and play), scheduled to open on 11 November 2006, will go ahead as planned, and will celebrate the remarkable life and work of this influential figure of British graphic design. Synthesising the graphic traditions of Europe and North America to develop a spirited, witty and very personal visual style, ALAN FLETCHER is among the most influential figures in British graphic design as a founder of Fletcher/Forbes/Gill in the 1960s and Pentagram in the 1970s. Keep reading →
April 4, 2009
Terence Conran 
Designer (1931- )
Terence Conran has had more impact than any other designer of his generation on everyday life in contemporary Britain though a series of parallel careers. Conran describes the private boarding school he attended as an “inspired” choice by his mother, because it particularly encouraged creativity in its pupils and balanced academic study with practical, physical activities like digging the vegetable garden and rudimentary plumbing. Later, at the Central School of Art and Design in London, Conran absorbed the Bauhaus and Arts & Crafts influenced beliefs that “a good design should be available to the whole community, not just to a few”. After Central he set up as an independent designer at the age of 21. Keep reading →
March 20, 2009
ARNE JACOBSEN 
Architect + Furniture Designer (1902-1971)
ARNE JACOBSEN (1902-1971) was one of Denmark’s most influential 20th century architects and designers. Both his buildings and products, like his Swan and Egg Chairs, combine modernist ideals with a Nordic love of naturalism.
When a Dane who spoke very little English and seldom left his Copenhagen studio was commissioned in 1958 to design a new college for Oxford University, one eminent architect sent a letter to The Times describing it as the worst insult to British architecture since the 11th century when a Frenchman had been entrusted with the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral. Keep reading →
March 20, 2009
ALEC ISSIGONIS 
Automotive Designer (1906-1988)
One of the most original car designers of the modern era, ALEC ISSIGONIS (1906-1988) is best known as the creator of the Mini, but also designed two more of the five best-selling cars in British motoring history – the Morris Minor and the Austin 1100.
”One thing that I learnt the hard way – well not the hard way, the easy way – when you’re designing a new car for production, never, never copy the opposition,” opined Alec Issigonis, when asked to summarise his approach to car design. An eccentric and often outspoken character, Issigonis was equally dismissive of market research, which he described as “bunk” and even mathematics, derided as “the enemy of every truly creative man”. Keep reading →
March 4, 2009
MATTHEW CARTER
Typography Designer (1937-)
The most important typography designer of our time, MATTHEW CARTER (1937-) is one of the few designers whose work is used by millions of people every day. Having devoted the first half of his career to typefaces for use in print, such as Miller and Bell Centennial, he then pioneered the design of fonts for use on screen, notably Verdana for Microsoft.
After leaving school, Matthew Carter spent what was intended to be his gap year at the Enschedé type foundry at Haarlem in the Netherlands learning how to making type by hand; that is, carving the steel characters that would be punched into copper matrices for the casting of lead type. This process was more or less commercially obsolete, and most Enschedé interns spent their year working around the various departments of the printing works. Carter’s decision to remain in the type foundry gave him a peculiarly intense vocational training that was in some ways anachronistic. Keep reading →
February 28, 2009
DAVID MELLOR
Cutlery Designer + Manufacturer (1930-) 
Combining the roles of designer, manufacturer, craftsman and retailer DAVID MELLOR (1930-) steered a unique position in late 20th century British design. Renowned as a designer and maker of cutlery, Mellor has also designed furniture, tools, ecclesiastical silver, traffic lights and a post box.
A truly British designer, David Mellor has built his reputation on the design of a particular product – cutlery – and by involving himself in its manufacturing. His career has been informed by his birthplace – Sheffield, city of steel. When he was growing up there in the 1930s more than half of the city’s workforce, including Mellor’s father, was employed in the cutlery and steel industries. Keep reading →
February 26, 2009
CHRISTIAN DIOR
Fashion Designer (1905-1957)
The most influential fashion designer of the late 1940s and 1950s, CHRISTIAN DIOR (1905 to 1957) dominated fashion after World war II with the hourglass silhouette of his voluptuous New Look. He also defined a new business model in the post-war fashion industry by establishing Dior as a global brand across a wide range of products.
“My mother says that when I was little my grandfather used to take me and my cousins on one side after dinner and ask us what we wanted to be when he grew up, and I’d say ‘Christian Dior’,” recalled the French fashion designer Christian Lacroix.” He was so famous in France at the time. It seemed as if he wasn’t a man, but an institution.” Keep reading →
February 26, 2009
WELLS COATES 
Architect + Industrial Designer (1895-1958)
One of the pioneers of the emergence of the modern movement in British architecture and design during the 1930s, Wells Coates (1895-1958) also developed innovative approaches to housing design, notably in Lawn Road flats, as well as electrical products, broadcasting studios and yachts.
“Society today is in a real state of transition,” stated Wells Wintemute Coates. “We are living in an age when a new architecture is not only possible but necessary. As architects of a new order, we should be concerned with an architectural solution of social and economic problems.” Keep reading →
February 16, 2009
ZAHA HADID
Architect (1950-)
Zaha Hadid Architecture and Design
29 June – 25 November 2007
The first woman to win the Pritzker Prize for Architecture in its 26 year history, ZAHA HADID (1950-) has defined a radically new approach to architecture by creating buildings, such as the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, with multiple perspective points and fragmented geometry to evoke the chaos of modern life.
The opening words of the citation when Zaha Hadid was named as the first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture in 2004 were: “Her architectural career has not been traditional or easy.” An understatement. All architects have to struggle, but Hadid seems to have struggled rather more than most. Her single-mindedness, her singular lack of compromise is the stuff of legend although, as one writer commented, like a hurricane, “the storms are all on the outside”. In part, it is simple artistic temperament, necessary, perhaps, to create forceful Keep reading →
