"Never, never copy the opposition," said Sir Alec Issigonis when challenged on his approach to car design. The Mini may have been born out of the fuel crises of the 1950s, but its startlingly original look and fuel-efficient performance made it one of the definitive answers to the petrol rationing after the Suez crisis. With a radical design approach, both in terms of its look and the way it was engineered, the Mini was initially received with scepticism. It went on to become Europe's best-selling car and an indelible icon of the Swinging Sixties.
When the GPO invited design submissions for a new public phone kiosk in 1923, response was so enthusiastic that it took them 3 years to finally select noted architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's elegant solution. Constructed from cast iron, with 4 facades and 18 glazed panels, its crowning glory was its gently domed roof based on Sir John Soane's tomb in St Pancras Church Gardens.
Sometimes great design is born out of the search for a solution to a problem. In the case of George Carwardine’s Anglepoise lamp, though, the solution already existed... a new type of spring which could be moved into a wide range of positions yet remain rigid. But what problem did it solve? Carwardine, inspired by the movement of human limbs, developed a work lamp which could be simultaneously flexible and stable, pointing the light in whichever direction you wanted. Which certainly solved the problem of how to light his late-night tinkering sessions.
As chief designer for Supermarine Aviation Works in Southampton, Reginald Mitchell changed the course of British history. The Spitfire, such a decisive weapon in the Battle of Britain, was said to be the smallest an aircraft could be built around man and engine. Always viewed by Mitchell as a work in progress, the Spitfire went through 40 different incarnations – with more than 20,000 planes produced – by the time it was retired in 1954.
9th December 2005. The 159 bus from Marble Arch to Streatham. The end of an era as the beloved Routemaster took its final journey. The first made its appearance in 1956. With AMM Durrant's lightweight aluminium construction, and using techniques drawn from aircraft design, the Routemaster was surprisingly agile for a mass transport system.
Funky, practical and virtually indestructible, the "Polyprop" chair has sold millions throughout the world. In 1963, designer Robin Day found the perfect material to help him realise his vision of low-cost, robust seating suitable for mass production: polypropylene. Easy to stack, lightweight and sturdy, it's now an ubiquitous sight in schools and hospitals.
Mary Quant's Bazaar was one of the epicentres of Swinging London: a daring, chic boutique frequented by the Chelsea set. The miniskirt was her finest hour. Androgynous, classless, daring and elegant, it came to epitomise the look of the era. If couturier André Courrèges invented the idea of the miniskirt, Quant gave it wings.
When Allen Lane settled on the name 'Penguin' for his fledgling publishing venture in 1935, he sent office junior Edward Young off to London Zoo to sketch suitable models for the logo. The rigorous application of colour - orange for fiction, blue for biography and green for crime – within a horizontal grid provided Penguin with the radical graphic template that they would retain until the early 1950s, and which is now being used to revitalise the brand.
Only 20 of the sleek-nosed, delta-winged Concordes were ever built. But from 1969 to its retirement in 2003, the world's most successful supersonic passenger aircraft was the undisputed king of the transatlantic crossing. Aerospatiale-BAC's Concorde cruised at 60,000 feet – over 11 miles up, and high enough to see the curvature of the earth – and guzzled 25,000 litres of fuel an hour. The only real obstacle to its creation came when the British and French governments argued over whether it should be spelled with an "e" or not.
Harry Beck received just five guineas for his iconic map of the London Underground. But his thinking was years ahead of its time. Ignoring the stations' actual geographic locations, he focused on how they related to each other, and so made the complex warren of stations simple to understand. His approach has been imitated around the world, but never bettered.
