The World Raymond Loewy Created

The World Raymond Loewy Created
Air Force One? His design.

Streamlined locomotives? His doing.

The logos for Nabisco, Exxon, Shell and Sealtest?

His, his, his and his again.

Raymond Loewy is called "the father of industrial design" for a reason.

He took ugly consumer items -- pencil sharpeners, refrigerators -- and made them beautiful.

He designed cars that were a decade or more ahead of their time.

He created kitchen appliances, crockery and furniture, and did design work for Greyhound, the U.S. Postal Service and NASA.

It's not for nothing that Loewy, who was born in Europe in 1893 and died in 1986, titled one of his books, "Never Leave Well Enough Alone."

"Raymond started industrial design and the streamlining movement," architect Philip Johnson once said.

"He designed everything from lipstick to locomotives," observes Laura Moody of the Museum of Design Atlanta, which is showing an exhibit of his work, "Raymond Loewy: Designs for a Consumer Culture," through the end of December.

After its Atlanta stop, the exhibition will work its way across the United States over the next two years.

Even today, his work -- which dates back to the 1920s -- looks startlingly modern, with clean lines, minimal fussiness and creative use of color.