93 Fun Facts About Design

Which architect founded the Bauhaus school in Weimar in 1919?

Walter Gropius's school was pushed out of Weimar by right-wing political pressure, so it reopened in Dessau in 1925.

Which city's UNESCO-listed 'White City' is famed for its 1930s Bauhaus-style buildings?

Tel Aviv: its architects, trained in Europe before emigrating, adapted modernist ideas to the city's hot climate.

Which car did Alec Issigonis design for BMC after the 1956 Suez Crisis brought fuel rationing?

The Mini: to seat four passengers in a tiny, fuel-efficient car, Issigonis turned the engine sideways to drive the front wheels.

Dieter Rams, longtime head of design at Braun, is known for which motto?

Less, but better: in the 1970s Rams asked himself whether his own design was good design, and his answer became his ten principles.

Braun's 1956 SK 4 radiogram earned what nickname for its clear acrylic lid?

Snow White's coffin: Dieter Rams added the see-through lid, breaking with radios built to look like traditional furniture.

Charles Eames wanted his 1956 lounge chair to have 'the warm, receptive look' of what?

A well-used first baseman's mitt: Charles and Ray Eames were reinventing the old English club chair in moulded plywood and leather.

Which American company has manufactured the Eames Lounge Chair since it launched in 1956?

Herman Miller: the chair became an icon of modern design, yet when it first came out it didn't look modern at all.

How much was Portland State student Carolyn Davidson paid for designing the Nike Swoosh in 1971?

$35: Phil Knight's first verdict was 'I don't love it, but maybe it will grow on me', yet in 1983 Nike gave Davidson company stock.

The 1915 Coca-Cola contour bottle's shape was based on a picture of what?

A cocoa pod: finding nothing on coca or kola at the library, designer Earl Dean sketched a cocoa pod from an Encyclopaedia Britannica picture instead.

Which draughtsman devised London's diagrammatic Tube map in 1931?

Harry Beck drew it after being laid off, and it was rejected at first before the 1933 pocket edition proved a hit.

What was 3M's Spencer Silver trying to make in 1968 when he stumbled on the Post-it adhesive?

A super-strong glue was the goal, but Silver made a weak, reusable adhesive that found no use until colleague Art Fry anchored his hymnal bookmarks with it.

Why were the original Post-it notes canary yellow?

The lab next door had yellow scrap paper, so the colour was chance; a free-sample blitz in Boise, Idaho, then paved the way for the 1980 US launch.

George Carwardine designed the Anglepoise lamp while working on what?

Vehicle suspension systems: Carwardine's spring-balanced lamp drew so much demand that spring makers Herbert Terry & Sons took over making it.

Marcel Breuer's tubular-steel Wassily chair, designed at the Bauhaus in 1925–26, was inspired by what?

Bicycle construction: Breuer bought his first bicycle in 1925 and was struck by how light and strong its tubular steel frame was.

The Vespa scooter's name is Italian for what?

Wasp: on first seeing the 1946 prototype, Enrico Piaggio exclaimed 'Sembra una vespa!', 'It looks like a wasp!', and the name stuck.

Gerrit Rietveld's Red and Blue Chair is an icon of which art movement?

De Stijl: the chair began as plain, unpainted wood, and Rietveld painted it in its famous colours only years later.

Which rival knife maker did Victorinox buy in 2005?

Wenger: by 2013 Victorinox had folded Wenger's knives into its own brand.

The IKEA Billy bookcase was designed in 1979 by Gillis Lundgren, who first sketched it where?

On the back of a napkin: Lundgren kept Billy timeless, since people keep adding to a bookcase as their collections grow.

After being ousted from Apple, Steve Jobs hired Paul Rand to design which company's identity?

NeXT: Jobs paid Rand $100,000 in 1986, and Rand made his case in a presentation book that walked through the black-cube logo step by step.

Saul Bass's animated paper cut-out titles opened which 1955 Otto Preminger film?

The Man with the Golden Arm: Bass chose a jagged, disjointed arm as the central image because the film was about heroin addiction, then a taboo subject.

Milton Glaser sketched the 'I ❤ NY' logo in what unlikely place?

The back of a taxi: Glaser sketched it in red crayon, and he did the whole job for free.

Which typeface did Vincent Connare design to make Microsoft Bob look less formal?

Comic Sans was finished too late for Microsoft Bob, so it debuted instead in the speech bubbles of Microsoft 3D Movie Maker.

Which serif typeface was commissioned by a British newspaper in 1931?

Times New Roman: Stanley Morison designed it for The Times, and a year after its debut it was released for commercial sale.

Which British designer led Apple's iMac and iPhone design and left in 2019 to found LoveFrom?

Jony Ive left Apple as an employee, yet Apple signed on as one of the primary clients of his new design company.

Raymond Loewy, designer of the Shell logo and Lucky Strike pack, also designed the livery of which aircraft?

Air Force One: until Loewy's 1962 redesign with John and Jacqueline Kennedy, presidential jets still wore a military red, orange and black scheme.

Philippe Starck's Juicy Salif lemon squeezer for Alessi was inspired by the shape of what?

A squid: Starck sketched the squeezer while eating a plate of squid and squeezing a lemon over it.

Which Italian designer founded the postmodern Memphis Group in 1980?

Ettore Sottsass: the group took its name from Bob Dylan's 'Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again', played over and over at its first meeting.

Alvar Aalto's wavy 1936 glass vase takes its common name from which Helsinki establishment?

The Savoy restaurant, which has used the vases since 1937; Aalto first entered the design in a glassworks competition as 'The Eskimo woman's leather trousers'.

Which architect coined the maxim 'form follows function'?

It is often wrongly credited to the sculptor Horatio Greenough, whose functionalist essays were forgotten until the 1930s.

Which command-key symbol did Susan Kare choose for the original Macintosh?

The looped square: Steve Jobs felt so many Apple logos in the menus took the logo in vain, so Kare picked a symbol used in Sweden to mark places of interest.

Which designer drew the diagram-style subway map New York introduced in 1972?

Massimo Vignelli: the MTA later swapped his diagram for a conventional map, yet in time returned to a Vignelli-inspired design.

Which car did DDB's 1959 'Think Small' ads sell?

VW Beetle: instead of hiding the car's small size, DDB made it the selling point, and Ad Age later ranked the campaign the 20th century's best.

The name 'Lego' comes from a Danish phrase meaning what?

Play well: the workshop behind the name began by making wooden toys, and only later turned to plastic bricks.

What did a sawmill's cyclone dust extractor inspire James Dyson to build?

A vacuum cleaner: annoyed that his Hoover's clogged bag lost suction, Dyson spent five years building 5,127 prototypes of a bagless cyclone design.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed the Willow Tearooms in which city?

Glasgow: after a £10m restoration and then difficult trading, Mackintosh's 1903 tea rooms were taken over by the National Trust for Scotland in 2024.

The name 'Art Deco' derives from a 1925 exhibition held in which city?

The Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes gave the style its shorthand, though the term only caught on later.

London's Design Museum was founded in 1989 by which designer and retailer?

Terence Conran: his Boilerhouse gallery at the V&A, run with Stephen Bayley, was such a success that it led directly to the museum.

Ernő Rubik's 1974 puzzle was originally sold under what name?

Magic Cube: Ideal Toy wanted a distinctive name it could protect, so the puzzle was renamed after its inventor.

Under what name was Karl Elsener's improved 1897 multi-tool patented?

Officer's and sports knife: in 1909 Elsener honoured his late mother by naming his brand Victoria, the root of Victorinox.

Gary Hustwit's 2007 documentary marked the 50th anniversary of which typeface?

Helvetica: to make the face more appealing abroad, its makers renamed it after Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland.

Who designed the geometric sans-serif typeface Futura, released in 1927?

Paul Renner: an outspoken critic of the Nazis, he was arrested soon after they seized power in 1933 and sacked from his Munich school post.

Eero Saarinen said he designed the Tulip chair to clear up 'the slum of' what?

Legs: Saarinen wanted the whole chair in one material, but that proved impossible, so an aluminium stem finished to match holds up the fibreglass shell.

What colour scheme did the US Navy suggest for the Golden Gate Bridge before its famous orange won?

Black and yellow stripes: the Navy wanted them for visibility, but consulting architect Irving Morrow's International Orange won out.

The FedEx wordmark uses a custom typeface to hide which shape in the gap between its 'E' and 'x'?

An arrow pointing right sits in the negative space between the letters, an effect made possible by a proprietary typeface based on Univers and Futura.

Which Spanish Surrealist painter designed the logo for Chupa Chups lollipops in 1969?

Salvador Dalí drew the lollipop logo nearly four decades after painting the melting clocks of The Persistence of Memory.

Rob Janoff added a bite to the Apple logo so that people would not mistake the fruit for what?

A cherry, or some other fruit, was what Janoff feared people would see. The logo's coloured stripes advertised that Apple's computers could display colour.

Gerald Holtom's 1958 peace symbol combines the letters N and D from which signalling system?

Flag semaphore gave the symbol its lines, N and D standing for nuclear disarmament. It was first carried on a march from Trafalgar Square to Aldermaston.

Christian Louboutin created his signature red soles in the early 1990s by painting a shoe with what?

Nail polish borrowed from an assistant turned a black-soled pair red. The shade is now specified as Pantone 18-1663.

Which snack container did Fredric Baur design in the 1960s and later ask to have his ashes buried in?

A Pringles can holds part of his cremated remains: his children chose the Original flavour, and the rest went into ordinary urns.

Toru Iwatani has said Pac-Man's shape came to him at lunch from which food with a slice removed?

A pizza missing a slice is the story Iwatani tells, though he has also said he rounded off kuchi, the Japanese character for mouth.

Chris Costello's Papyrus typeface, drawn in 1982, was mocked for its use in which James Cameron film?

Avatar used Papyrus in its subtitles and a modified version in its logo. Costello had sold the rights to the font for just $750.

George de Mestral devised Velcro after an Alpine hunting trip left his dog's fur full of what?

Burdock burrs clung to his clothes too, so he studied their tiny hooks. The name Velcro joins the French words velours (velvet) and crochet (hook).

Artist James Montgomery Flagg based Uncle Sam's face in the 'I Want YOU' recruiting poster on whom?

Himself, aged and given a white goatee: Flagg said it saved the trouble of arranging a model. Over four million copies were printed during World War I.

BMW's blue and white roundel, often mistaken for a spinning propeller, echoes the colours of which German state?

Bavaria is in the company name too: BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke, or Bavarian Motor Works. The propeller story is a persistent myth.

NASA's round blue insignia, used alongside a logotype known as the 'worm', goes by which food nickname?

The meatball got its nickname in 1975, reportedly coined at NASA Headquarters to tell the round insignia apart from the newer worm logotype.

Which mythical creature, drawn with a double fish tail in the first version, appears in the Starbucks logo?

A siren is how the company describes her: a twin-tailed mermaid from Greek mythology. Some scholars have linked the figure to Melusine, though others doubt it.

Ferrari's prancing horse emblem first appeared on which vehicle of World War I hero Francesco Baracca?

A fighter plane flown by the Italian ace Baracca carried the horse first. Ferrari's racing team used it from the 1932 Spa 24 Hours, where its cars finished first and second.

The Bluetooth logo merges the initials of 10th-century Danish king Harald Bluetooth written in which script?

Viking runes for H and B, called Hagall and Bjarkan, are bound into one mark. The name was chosen because Harald united Danish tribes much as the standard unites communication protocols.

NBC's peacock logo was introduced in 1956 to show off the network's programming in which new technology?

Colour television was the selling point: the original eleven-feathered bird was an abstraction meant to suggest richness of colour.

McDonald's Golden Arches, drawn up with architect Stanley Meston in the 1950s, began as real parts of what?

The restaurant itself carried two 25-foot sheet-metal arches trimmed in neon, worked up from a rough sketch by Richard McDonald.

The Rolling Stones' tongue and lips logo evokes which Hindu deity, named in Mick Jagger's brief to the designer?

Kali is commonly shown with her tongue sticking out, which gave designer John Pasche his idea. He was paid just £50 for the logo, and a further £200 in 1972.

Britain's 1939 poster 'Keep Calm and Carry On' was little known until a copy turned up decades later in what?

A bookshop, Barter Books in Alnwick, found one in a box of second-hand books bought at auction. Although 2.45 million copies were printed, the poster was rarely displayed.

Harvey Ball drew his famous smiley face in 1963 to lift staff morale at which kind of company?

An insurance firm in Worcester, Massachusetts, wanted to cheer up staff after a merger. State Mutual asked Ball for a little smile to put on buttons, desk cards and posters.

Capital letters are called 'uppercase' because printers setting metal type by hand kept them where?

In the higher of two trays, or cases, set one above the other at the compositor's frame. The lower one held the small letters, which is why they are called lower case.

Which term for the space between lines of type comes from the metal strips printers once set between them?

Leading is pronounced 'ledding' because the strips were made of lead. With 10-point type and 12 points from one baseline to the next, the leading is 2 points.

In four-colour CMYK printing, the letter K stands for which word, the name of the plate that carries black ink?

Key plates print outlines and text more precisely than the cyan, magenta and yellow inks could manage between them.

The 'lorem ipsum' filler text used in page layouts is scrambled Latin from a work by which Roman statesman?

Cicero wrote the original in De finibus bonorum et malorum in the 1st century BC. The filler begins mid-word: 'lorem' is the tail end of dolorem.

Courier, a typewriter face designed for IBM in the 1950s, is the industry standard for which kind of document?

Screenplays are written in 12-point Courier or a close variant. IBM never trademarked the name, so the design passed into the public domain.

Impact, a heavy typeface designed by Geoffrey Lee in 1965, found new fame in the 2010s as the lettering of what?

Internet memes and image macros made Impact so familiar that it is now often used ironically. It was first released by the Stephenson Blake foundry of Sheffield.

Which typeface, first commissioned by GQ magazine, was used by Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign?

Gotham grew out of Tobias Frere-Jones's walks around Manhattan with a camera. His main model was the sign on the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Which board game was created in Montreal in 1979 by a photo editor and a sports editor, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott?

Trivial Pursuit went on sale in Canada in 1981. Its players earn a plastic wedge for a correct answer on each of six category headquarters spaces.

Gary Anderson, a 23-year-old student, won a 1970 contest run by a packaging company with which now-universal emblem?

The recycling logo is a Möbius strip drawn in three folded segments. Anderson won a $2,500 scholarship, and the sponsor rotated his design to stand on its base.

Kenji Ekuan, who later designed the Komachi bullet train, created the 1961 bottle for which Japanese product?

Kikkoman soy sauce is still poured from his bottle, the design he is best known for. The E3 Series Komachi train followed in 1997.

Earl Tupper modelled the airtight seal of his Tupperware lids on the lids of which everyday containers?

Paint cans gave him the idea for a liquid-proof, airtight lid. He later joined forces with Brownie Wise, who had found great success selling Tupperware at home parties.

Sam Farber founded the kitchen brand OXO after seeing his wife struggle to grip tools because of which condition?

Arthritis in Betsy Farber's hands was mild, yet ordinary kitchen tools were hard for her to hold. The name OXO was chosen because it reads the same in any orientation.

The Citroën DS, styled by Italian sculptor Flaminio Bertoni, has a name that sounds like the French word for what?

Goddess is déesse in French, pronounced exactly like the letters DS. The sister model, the ID, made the same pun on idée, meaning idea.

Which Italian, named Car Designer of the Century in 1999, styled the DeLorean and the first Fiat Panda?

Giorgetto Giugiaro led the straight-lined 'folded paper' era of the 1970s and 1980s, and his DeLorean went on to star in the Back to the Future films.

Which architect of Liverpool Cathedral and Battersea Power Station also designed Britain's red telephone box?

Giles Gilbert Scott won a 1924 competition judged by the Fine Arts Commission. His prototype kiosk, the K2, still stands at Burlington House in London.

The clear Absolut Vodka bottle, with lettering printed directly on the glass, was inspired by an old bottle for what?

Medicine once came in such bottles: the model was an old apothecary bottle. From 1981 the adverts paired it with two-word headlines such as 'Absolut Perfection'.

Campbell's chose red and white soup labels in 1898 after an executive admired which university's football uniforms?

Cornell's crisp carnelian red caught the eye of executive Herberton Williams. Andy Warhol later made the label the subject of a series of 32 paintings.

The word 'zipper' began in 1923 as the B.F. Goodrich Company's name for which product fitted with the fastener?

Rubber galoshes were sold by Goodrich as Zippers, and the name stuck to Gideon Sundbäck's fastener rather than the footwear.

The nose of the 500 Series Shinkansen bullet train was shaped to mimic the beak of which bird?

Kingfisher-style biomimicry cut the train's noise and trimmed its energy use by 15%, while raising its speed by 10%.

Before Hermès created a handbag for her in 1984, actress Jane Birkin was known for carrying her belongings in what?

A basket held more than a conventional handbag. The prototype Birkin, made after her chance meeting with Hermès chief Jean-Louis Dumas, later sold at auction for €8.6 million.

The bikini, launched by Louis Réard in July 1946, was named after a Pacific atoll that was in the news for what?

Atomic bomb tests had begun at Bikini Atoll four days earlier. A rival two-piece launched that May was called the Atome and billed as the smallest swimsuit in the world.

Harper's Bazaar editor Carmel Snow gave which lasting name to the style of Christian Dior's first collection in 1947?

The New Look was her phrase, not his, coined for Dior's debut show of 90 outfits in February 1947. Her label stuck to his style, and to others', for the next five years.

Army doctor Klaus Märtens designed the air-cushioned sole of Dr. Martens boots after hurting his ankle doing what?

Skiing in 1945 left him with an injured ankle, so he made a softer pair of boots for his own use. The brand is still distinguished by that sole and by its yellow stitching.

Which word game did architect Alfred Butts devise in the 1930s by counting how often letters appeared in newspapers?

Scrabble's tile values come from his tallies of sources including The New York Times: common letters score 1 point, while the rare Q and Z score 10.

Lizzie Magie created The Landlord's Game, the forerunner of Monopoly, in 1903 to explain which economist's ideas?

Henry George argued for a single tax on land in his book Progress and Poverty. Magie wrote two sets of rules, one rewarding everyone and one rewarding monopolists.

English card makers gave the ace of spades its ornate design because that card once carried proof of what?

Paid stamp duty was shown on the ace from 1712, at first by a hand stamp. Makers were free to choose their own design after 1862, but most kept an ornate ace.

A4 and the other ISO paper sizes share which aspect ratio, chosen so that a sheet cut in half keeps its shape?

Root two to one is the only ratio that survives halving, an advantage the German scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg described in a letter of 1786.

Danish student Susanne Koefoed's original wheelchair-access symbol was later revised by giving her stick figure what?

A head, drawn as a simple circle, was added so the figure would read as a seated person and not a monogram of letters. Koefoed says it was done without her knowledge.

Otl Aicher oversaw a widely used system of sports pictograms as lead designer of which city's Olympic Games?

Munich's organisers hired him in 1966 for the 1972 Summer Olympics. His pictograms, based in part on those of the 1964 Games, helped visitors find their way around.

Which Victorian designer of the 'Strawberry Thief' fabric became a driving force in the Arts and Crafts movement?

William Morris designed Strawberry Thief in 1883 as a furnishing fabric. He was also a poet, a writer and a socialist activist.