50 Fun Facts About Design

Which architect founded the Bauhaus school in Weimar in 1919?

The school moved to Dessau and then Berlin, and its last director, Mies van der Rohe, closed it in 1933 under Nazi pressure.

Which city's 'White City' has the world's highest concentration of Bauhaus-style buildings?

Many Jewish Bauhaus architects emigrated there in the 1930s after the school was closed.

The Swiss sans-serif released in 1957 by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann was originally called what?

It was renamed in 1960 after the Latin word for Swiss, to trade on Switzerland's reputation for ultra-modern graphic design.

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

He also said that 'indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design.'

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

It broke with the tradition of hiding electronics inside furniture-style cabinets. Apple's iOS calculator later paid tribute to his ET66 calculator.

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

Ray Eames thought the prototype looked 'comfortable and un-designy'. It was the first Eames chair aimed at the high-end market.

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

The chair debuted on Arlene Francis's daytime TV show Home. Knoll makes the Barcelona chair; Vitra makes the Panton.

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

Phil Knight's first reaction was 'I don't love it, but maybe it will grow on me.' In 1983 he gave her a diamond Swoosh ring and 500 shares of stock.

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

Earl R. Dean of the Root Glass Company found the picture in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The brief demanded a bottle recognisable by touch in the dark.

Who designed the first schematic London Tube map in 1931?

He was paid ten guineas for the card edition and five for the poster. Colleagues compared it to an electrical circuit diagram, though he said that was not his inspiration.

Why did the Tube map's designer decide the stations' real geographic positions didn't matter?

He produced a joke version with electrical symbols and a 'Bakerlite' line. The Underground was sceptical of the unpaid spare-time project until it proved instantly popular in 1933.

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

He spent five years pitching his 'solution without a problem' before colleague Art Fry used it to anchor a bookmark in his hymn book.

Why were the original Post-it notes canary yellow?

Post-its launched across the US in 1980 after a free-sample blitz in Boise, Idaho, where 90 percent of recipients said they would buy them.

The Barcelona chair was designed by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich for whom?

Its shape is thought to derive from the Roman curule chair. Knoll did not even name it 'Barcelona' until 1987.

George Carwardine designed the Anglepoise lamp in 1932 after working on what?

Contrary to popular claims, he said the mechanism had nothing to do with imitating the human arm. Herbert Terry and Sons took over manufacturing in 1934.

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

Despite the name, it was not made for Wassily Kandinsky; he simply admired it and Breuer built him a duplicate. The name came decades later from Italian maker Gavina.

The Vespa scooter's name is Italian for what?

Aeronautical engineer Corradino D'Ascanio, who hated motorcycles, redesigned Piaggio's 'Donald Duck' prototype into the 1946 Vespa.

Which 1952 film, with Audrey Hepburn riding side-saddle behind Gregory Peck, is credited with selling 100,000 Vespas?

John Wayne, Marlon Brando and Dean Martin were all owners by 1956.

Consumer Swiss Army knives from Victorinox and Wenger can be told apart by what?

Victorinox uses a shield around the cross; Wenger used a rounded square. The two firms supplied about 50,000 knives a year to the Swiss military.

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

Lundgren was IKEA's fourth employee. More than 140 million Billys have been sold, enough that economists use its price as an index.

Paul Rand created logos for IBM, UPS, ABC and which Steve Jobs computer company?

Rand was one of the first American designers to embrace the Swiss Style and taught at Yale for decades.

Saul Bass designed the animated paper cut-out arm for the titles of which 1955 Otto Preminger film?

He also did North by Northwest and Psycho for Hitchcock, and the AT&T globe and Hanna-Barbera 'swirling star' logos.

Milton Glaser sketched the 'I ❤ NY' logo in 1976 in what unlikely place?

He drew it in red crayon on scrap paper. The original is now in the Museum of Modern Art, and the letters are set in American Typewriter.

Vincent Connare made Comic Sans in 1994 after seeing which serif face in Microsoft Bob?

He felt the serif type made the cartoon dog look far too formal. The 'Ban Comic Sans' campaign began in 1999.

Which serif typeface was commissioned by a British newspaper in 1931 and debuted in 1932?

Stanley Morison of Monotype and lettering artist Victor Lardent based it on the older face Plantin. It debuted in print on 3 October 1932.

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

He joined Apple in 1992 and worked closely with Steve Jobs after Jobs's return. He has been chancellor of the Royal College of Art since 2017.

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

He also styled the Studebaker Avanti, Coca-Cola vending machines and Pennsylvania Railroad locomotives, and appeared on the cover of Time in 1949.

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

He sketched it on a napkin while eating calamari and squeezing lemon over it. Alessi's president called the product 'a big joke'.

Which Italian designer founded the postmodern Memphis Group in 1980?

Its colourful laminate-and-terrazzo look defined the mid-1980s and was later succeeded by the Y2K aesthetic.

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

Its design was inspired by the leather breeches of a Sami woman, and early prototypes were blown inside a ring of wooden sticks.

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 design for the original Macintosh?

Her fonts Chicago, Geneva and Monaco formed the first proportionally spaced digital font family. She also drew the Windows 3.0 solitaire cards.

Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York subway map was criticised for what?

Vignelli also designed the subway signage and the 1967 American Airlines logo, which lasted until 2013.

The Volkswagen Beetle was officially given the name 'Beetle' in which year?

Before that it was simply the Type 1. Its 65-year production run is the longest of any single-generation car, at 21.5 million units.

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

Ole Kirk Christiansen's Billund workshop adopted the name in 1934, thirteen years before it made its first plastic toys.

Lego's interlocking bricks were based on self-locking bricks invented in 1939 by which English toymaker?

Lego got a sample of the Kiddicraft bricks along with an injection-moulding machine bought from Windsor, England.

Since which year has the Pantone Color Institute named a Color of the Year?

The choice is made at a secret two-day meeting of national colour-standards representatives in a European capital.

When Chanel published a simple short black dress in Vogue in 1926, the magazine nicknamed it 'Chanel's' what?

Like the Model T, it was meant to be simple and accessible to women of every class. Vogue predicted it would become 'a sort of uniform for all women of taste'.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed the Willow Tearooms in which city?

They were commissioned by Catherine Cranston on Sauchiehall Street. His wife Margaret Macdonald collaborated on much of his interior work.

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?

It began in a converted banana warehouse at Shad Thames and won European Museum of the Year in 2018 after moving to Kensington.

Arne Jacobsen designed the Egg chair in 1959 for which building?

He designed the Swan for the same hotel. The Egg is thought to owe something to Eero Saarinen's Womb chair.

Verner Panton's S-shaped 1960s seat holds what distinction?

Panton is said to have been inspired by a neatly stacked pile of plastic buckets. Vitra's Willi Fehlbaum finally put it into production.

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

Rubik, a professor of architecture, took about a month to solve his own creation. Around 500 million cubes have been sold.

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

The Swiss military never commissioned that model, but it sold well abroad and rescued Elsener from near bankruptcy.

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

Designer Wim Crouwel praised the face in the film for its neutrality, 'a real step from the 19th century typeface'.

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

Built around the circle, it was created as a contribution to the New Frankfurt housing project; Futura Black even appears in the No Time to Die logo.

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

He wanted a one-piece fibreglass shell but the material could not support the base, so the pedestal is cast aluminium coated to match.

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

Architect Irving Morrow personally chose the orange, which also became part of the bridge's Art Deco detailing.

The influential Ulm School of Design in Germany operated between which years?

Founded by Inge Aicher-Scholl, Otl Aicher and ex-Bauhaus student Max Bill, its 'Ulm Model' still shapes design education despite the school's 15-year life.