Raymond Loewy Quotes & Sayings

People will turn to you, follow you, support you only as long as they are confident that you are doing your best. — Raymond Loewy

As a boy I had liked both drawing and physics, and I always abhorred the role of being a spectator. In 1908, when I was 15, I designed, built and flew a toy model airplane which won the then-famous James Gordon Bennett Cup. By 16 I had discovered that design could be fun and profitable, and this lesson has never been lost on me. — Raymond Loewy

Noise is a parasite. Anything noisy is poorly designed. — Raymond Loewy

It all must start with an inspired, spontaneous idea. — Raymond Loewy

I believe most in educated intuition, in what you get through profound experience. — Raymond Loewy

Design is too important to be left to designers. — Raymond Loewy

The automobile is an American cultural symbol. — Raymond Loewy

In every phase of the automotive industry, certain factors have been more important than all others in relation to the way the automobile has looked. Phase One is really the Ford story. Function and production were the most important considerations. The automobile was an invention, and it looked like one. — Raymond Loewy

My early colleagues and myself helped create the life styles of Americans and, by osmosis, of the rest of the world. I found it difficult to reconcile success with humility. I tried it first, but it meant avoiding the very essence of my career - total exhilaration and the ecstasy of creativity. — Raymond Loewy

The adult public's taste is not necessarily ready to accept the logical solutions to their requirements if the solution implies too vast a departure from what they have been conditioned into accepting as the norm. — Raymond Loewy

Form, which should be the clean-cut expression of mechanical excellence, has become sensuous and organic. — Raymond Loewy

The most reliable appliance has simplicity and quality, does what is demanded of it, is economical to use, easy to maintain, and just as easy to repair ... It also sells best and looks good. — Raymond Loewy

Design, vitalized and simplified, will make the comforts of civilized life available to an ever-increasing number of Americans. — Raymond Loewy

Today every city, town, or village is affected by it. We have entered the Neon Civilization and become a plastic world.. It goes deeper than its visual manifestations, it affects moral matters; we are engaged, as astrophysicists would say, on a decaying orbit. — Raymond Loewy

The public may admire a corporation for its impressive size. Who in the United States doesn't? But when a business, however gigantic, gets smug enough to believe that it is sufficient only to match competition on trivial points instead of leading competition in valid matters, that business is becoming vulnerable to public disfavor. — Raymond Loewy

The world is filled with archaic objects - mailboxes which look like alarm boxes, banks which look like places to break out of rather than places to enter. — Raymond Loewy

The American automobile has changed the habits of every member of modern society. — Raymond Loewy

If America wants to make "made in America" a symbol of excellence and worth. They have to make everything of high quality, otherwise the best. — Raymond Loewy

It's a simple exercise; a little logic, a little taste, and the will to cooperate. — Raymond Loewy

Industrial design keeps the customer happy, his client in the black and the designer busy. — Raymond Loewy

I've been accused of being a shell designer - you start with a machine and enclose it. But in many cases, the shell is essential. A locomotive without a shell would be nonfunctional. — Raymond Loewy

I alienated the automotive industry by saying that cars should be lightweight and compact. — Raymond Loewy

A designer must always think about the unfortunate production engineer who will have to manufacture what you have designed; try to understand his problems. — Raymond Loewy

There is a frantic race to merchandise tinsel and trash under the guise of 'modernism.' — Raymond Loewy

American products are marvels of production and functionality, but were unnecessarily and unbearably ugly, noisy smelly and offensive. — Raymond Loewy

Good design is not an applied veneer. — Raymond Loewy

Between two products equal in price, function and quality, the better looking will outsell the other. — Raymond Loewy

I sought excitement and, taking chances, I was all ready to fail in order to achieve something large. — Raymond Loewy

Never leave well enough alone. — Raymond Loewy

The most beautiful curve is a rising sales graph. — Raymond Loewy

The Coke bottle is a masterpiece of scientific, functional planning. In simpler terms, I would describe the bottle as well thought out, logical, sparing of material and pleasant to look at. — Raymond Loewy

The main goal is not to complicate the already difficult life of the consumer. — Raymond Loewy

Ugliness does not sell. — Raymond Loewy

It would seem that more than function itself, simplicity is the deciding factor in the aesthetic equation. One might call the process beauty through function and simplification. — Raymond Loewy

No manufacturer, from General Motors to the Little Lulu Novelty Company, would think of putting a product on the market without benefit of a designer. — Raymond Loewy

Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended. — Raymond Loewy

I believe one should design for the advantage of the largest mass of people, first and always. That takes care of ideologies and sociologies. — Raymond Loewy

I can claim to have made the daily life of the 20th Century more beautiful. — Raymond Loewy