Business screen magazine (1938)

The Designer Looks at Motion Pictures by Raymond Loewy The Indistrial Designer has frequently been labelled a Showman. While his work has a far deeper and more important significanee in the industrial world, his sense of the dramatic is often the element that makes a design click — it is that indefinable quality that we term visual appeal. The forthcoming Workrs Fair is affording the industrial designer unusual opportunities to make even broader use of this sense of showmanship and large manufacturers have been turning to him for original ideas in backgrounds and display. The creation of World's Fair exhibits requires a highly trained and specialized technique. The problems involved are entirely different from any other type of merchandising or display. The most important thing to consider is the mental attitude of the person visiting a Fair. He is first of all in a kind of gay holiday mood. While he is interested in factual information and expects to derive some educational benefit from a visit to a W'orld's Fair, he wants his information in the form of entertainment. A good exhibit must first of all attract attention. It must then hold that attention and to be successful it must create a lasting impression — put over a message — tell a personal story. In designing the focal exhibit for the Transportation Building, we were confronted with the problem of telling the story of transportation progress in a terse but compelling way. We estimated that three minutes should be the maximum time allotted to the unfolding of this historical epic and it was decided to do this by means of the moving picture. Here was a medium that could tell a quick outline story in a dramatic and interesting way. The moving picture alone does not and cannot make a good exhibit. It must be supplemented by other factors such as color, soimd, movement, etc. as part of the exhibit. In approaching the problem of an exhibit, the important questions to be answered are: What is the problem? What arc we trying to say? What is the best way to say it ? If the story to be told is long and detailed, movies are undoubtedly the best medium. On a 3x5 screen it is possible to give visualization to ideas that would require fifty times the INDUSTRIAL showmanship in '39 by Donald Deskey The New York World's Fair of 1939 will, I believe, set a new high for exhibit technique. Static product display will yield place to the super colossal feature attraction. Manufacturers and industries are alert to the necessity of exhibits that possess consummate showmanship. The industrial designer, long schooled in the technique of product design, display and exploitation, has welcomed Exhibit Design as a new field in which he can utilize his experience and imagination. Every device for the dramatic presentation of products and ideas is being probed. The motion picture is being used in many cases as an important part of the display. However, the use of the.sound film alone is^a standard theatre setting is nothing new to the visitor from the crossroads. But as an instrument for the visualization of ideas, it is being incorporated into more elabq^ate mechanical devices; stage presentations for industry with the motion picture as an integral part. In practically every exhibit of any importance which I have planned the motion picture is being used in some form or other. In my opinion new and dramatic uses of this medium will be revealed at the New York World's Fair which will be a directional signpost for industrial showmanship of the future. amount of space if some other medium were used. In depicting the various phases of transportation, one might, of course, resort to models, animated diaramas. living actors or posters and pictures. A World's Fair exhibit. howe\'er, should in no way suggest a museum. Movies and newsreels have an educational and entertainment value and they easily lend themselves to quick, dramatic presentation. Focal exiiibit fur transportation at the New York Fair shows Raymond Locwy's utilization of a tremendous screen (the world map) on which films depict progress in travel.