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Gordon Florian

Gordon Florian (1909-1984)

           U. S. industrial designer who studied at Yale University of Fine Art in New Haven, CT, and at the Grand Central School of Art in New York. In 1931 he was hired as a market analyst at General Electric’s  headquarters in Bridgeport, CT, and in 1933, joined Ray Patten’s new Appearance Design group. In 1940, he became assistant director under Patten, and assisted in the design of  the passenger (PA) and freight (FA) versions of the American Locomotive Company (Alco) and GE diesel locomotives.

          By 1946 Florian left GE to open his own design office in Bridgeport.He became a member of the Society of Industrial Designers (SID) and participated in an SID product design seminar at Lehigh University in 1949, lecturing on design analysis. He had taught design at the Junior College of Connecticut, which became the University of Bridgeport  after the war, and in 1949, he established a four-year industrial design program there. From 1950 to 1954 he lectured to engineering and business students at MIT.

         A lifelong artist of landscapes and a member of the Connecticut Watercolor Society, he exhibited all over the East Coast, including Silvermine. In 1984 he was named Fairfield (Connecticut) ‘Artist of the Year.’

 

 

Excerpted from “Designers of the Machine Age” by Carroll Gantz, to be published 2014 by McFarland & Company, Inc.

 

Sources: 
100 Years of Design consists of excerpts from a book by Carroll M. Gantz, FIDSA, entitled, Design Chronicles: Significant Mass-produced Designs of the 20th Century, published August 2005 by Schiffer Publications, Ltd.

Yamasaki, Kim

Author: 
Carroll Gantz, FIDSA
Birth/Death Age: 
1915-1999
Kim Yamasaki (1915-1999)

      A U.S. industrial designer born in Los Angeles CA of Japanese immigrant parents, Kim received a BA in Architecture from the University of Southern California in 1937. He worked for a few years on commercial design and studied motion picture set design at Los Angeles Art Center in 1939.

       After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, In February 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the interment in detention camps of  American citizens and resident aliens of primarily Japanese ancestry from the west coast. Kim, his mother, and two sisters were interned at Granada Relocation Center in Amache, CO in late 1942. As an American citizen, Kim was allowed to leave Granada in 1943, but his mother, who under U.S. law at the time, was not allowed to become a citizen, remained interned. Kim relocated by train to Chicago, where he was employed in the industrial design office of Dave Chapman, Inc. by May 1943. Soon, he was joined there by his good friend and fellow internee from California, Albert Nozaki.

        Kim worked on a number of product designs for Chapman’s firm for several years. In January 1945 he was drafted into the U.S. Army, attended military intelligence school, and served with post-war occupation forces in Japan as a designer of dependent housing, and as a translator with Japanese contractors and government. In November, he married his wife, Martha Hayakawa (1918-2003) in Chicago.

        Kim was honorably discharged in October 1946 and returned to the Chapman office, where he began working on design projects, including school furniture for Brunswick Corporation, outboard motors for Johnson, Igloo ice chests, and an RCA logo and clock radio. He holds numerous design patents for products.

Sources: 
100 Years of Design consists of excerpts from a book by Carroll M. Gantz, FIDSA, entitled, Design Chronicles: Significant Mass-produced Designs of the 20th Century, published August 2005 by Schiffer Publications, Ltd.
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I either own or have obtained the rights to the image(s) included with this article and grant industrialdesignhistory.com the right to post it(them) on its website and make use of it(them) in print media with proper attribution, or believe this use of the image(s) falls under the fair use doctrine.

Jackson, Gifford L./IDSA, FDINZ, MCSD

Author: 
Carroll Gantz, FIDSA
Birth/Death Age: 
1922
Gifford Jackson (b. 1922)

        U.S. industrial designer born in Auckland, New Zealand, who, at 90 in 2012, is among the oldest living members of IDSA. In 1939, at age 17, he set off by sea for England and by 1940, found himself in wartime Britain amidst German bombing raids. During this, Gifford studied naval architecture at Glasgow University in Scotland and began work as a draftsman for a shipyard in Leith, near Edinburgh. His experience was uncannily similar to that of his earlier compatriot, industrial design pioneer Jo Sinel (1889-1975) of Auckland, who had arrived in England in the midst of WW I. Gifford’s father knew the Sinel family.

        Soon, Gifford joined the Royal Air Force as a navigator and was sent to Canada for training, but before returning, stopped in New York and met a young lady, Virginia, at The Stage Door Canteen (a famous WW II place). He corresponded with Virginia after the war upon return to New Zealand, where he got a job with the largest appliance manufacturer in the country, taught himself about industrial design by reading about the Bauhaus and American pioneer designers, and joined the U.K. Society of Industrial Artists (later, the Chartered Society of Designers; CSD).

        Desiring more experience, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1949 through the kindness of Virginia’s father, and landed a job at Carl Otto’s office in New York, where Jay Doblin, Albrecht Goetz, and Harold Vanderhyde also worked. Sequentially, he worked for International Plainfield Motors, Donald Deskey, Norman Bel Geddes, Peter Schladermundt, and finally, worked ten years with Walter Dorwin Teague Associates. He also taught part-time in the evening school at Pratt Institute, and at Parsons School of Design.

Sources: 
100 Years of Design consists of excerpts from a book by Carroll M. Gantz, FIDSA, entitled, Design Chronicles: Significant Mass-produced Designs of the 20th Century, published August 2005 by Schiffer Publications, Ltd.
Copyright Information: 
I either own or have obtained the rights to the image(s) included with this article and grant industrialdesignhistory.com the right to post it(them) on its website and make use of it(them) in print media with proper attribution, or believe this use of the image(s) falls under the fair use doctrine.