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Friday, September 2, 2011

Designing the Future, 1958

Click to enlarge these:

'House You'll Live in Tomorrow...'
Um, so how much do these people spend on Windex, huh?

1957 ... Plastic-House--1
If the house is rockin', don't come knockin'.

Plasic-House--2
Who needs interior doors when you've got plastic curtains, right?

limitless electricity
Title of this pic is "Limitless Electricity." Got your home fusion pile set up yet?

shopping by TV
Imagine how many sales clerks it would take to show all those home-shopping customers the goods, one by one.

Here's a well-made short film by Chevrolet from 1958, which focuses on more than just car styling:  the "American Look," as they call it, was being applied to everything in sight at that time.   It's not your Head Trucker's favorite style, by any means - my taste was old-fashioned even way back then - but those of you who get off on the Jetson-y "populuxe" will no doubt cream in your jeans over this thirty-minute look at the subject, which goes by surprisingly quickly.  Lots more I could say on the topic, but I'll just let you fellas make up your own minds about it.  This is an interesting reminder of styles and tastes and concepts from a half-century ago - as well as how things got designed before we had computers to make it easy.  Enjoy.




Bonus: After the jump, here's a real heartbreaker for you from the same period.  Sigh. 


Woolworth lunch counter

2 comments:

Joe in OK said...

Thanks. I loved this film! I was five years old in 1958, and many of the "modern" stylish products in this film looked very familiar. I identified several that we had in our household. And... We owned a 1959 Chevrolet Impala like the ones that the GM stylists were developing in the video.

Russ Manley said...

I remember too, Joe, glad you liked.

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