Owen Finlay Maclaren, a former test pilot, was responsible for the design of the Supermarine Spitfire undercarriage for the Royal Air Force (RAF). Drawing inspiration from his familiarity with lightweight, collapsible structures, Owen went on to design the baby buggy, the first generation of comfortable and portable transport for toddlers.
Hilary Page was born in 1904 and sadly committed suicide in 1957. During the years 1932 to 1957 he changed the face of the British toy industry and created some of the classic pre-school toys played with by children today. Classic play patterns such as stacking, nesting and sorting were created in plastic, but Page's greatest claim to fame has to be his invention of what was to ultimately become the Lego brick.
Enid Marx spent her life designing objects to delight the eye. She created textiles, postage stamps, jampot labels, repeat patterns for both paper and cloth, book jackets and book illustrations. Add to that posters and textiles for the London underground, magazine adverts, suitcase linings, laminated tabletops and nursery furniture. She wrote eight children's books, and is co-author with Margaret Lambert of two books on folk art.
Victor Papanek was a designer and educator who became a strong advocate of the socially and ecologically responsible design of products, tools, and community infrastructures. He disapproved of manufactured products that were unsafe, showy, maladapted, or essentially useless. An untiring, eloquent promoter of design aims and approaches that would be sensitive to social and ecological considerations.
Without any formal training in computers, visual arts, or graphic design, Toru Iwatani (with the help of four others) completed Pac Man in 1980, after working on it for a year and five months. Pac Man introduced an element of humour into video games that designers sought to imitate, and appealed to a wider demographic than the teenage boys who flocked to action-oriented games.
Page 1 of 2 | Next »