Raymond Loewy - To the Industrial Designer

The first years of the worldwide economic crisis about 1930 were not easy. And his first job was to re-design a duplicator — it was an unsightly copying machine, typical for manufactured products at this time, and actually it was so constructed that it only fulfilled the purpose of copying.

It dawned on Loewy that the clumsy construction held optical and functional defects as well as danger potential — particularly the protruding thin legs were a prime example of bad industrial design. Thus he quickly drew a sketch showing the secretary stumbling over the bulky thing and thus all ducuments flying around in space. This seemed to have convinced the client.