Kenneth Grange

Kenneth Grange (born London, England, 1929) is a British industrial designer. Grange’s career in design began with work as a drafting assistant with the architect Jack Howe in the 1950s. His independent career started rather accidentally with commissions for exhibition stands, and by the early 1970s he was a founding-partner in Pentagram, the world-renowned interdisciplinary design consultancy.

Grange's career has spanned half a century, and many of his designs became – and are still – familiar items in the household or on the street. ["Kenneth Grange at the Boilerhouse: An Exhibition of British Product Design", The Conran Foundation/Boilerhouse Project (V&A Museum), London, 1983.] These designs include the first UK parking meters for Venner, food mixers for Kenwood, razors for Wilkinson Sword, cameras for Kodak, typewriters for Imperial, clothes irons for Morphy Richards, cigarette lighters for Ronson, washing machines for Bendix, lamps for Anglepoise [http://www.designmuseum.org/design/anglepoise] [http://www.anglepoise.com/shopexd.asp?id=100] , pens for Parker, and the aerodynamics, interior layout and exterior styling of the nose cone of British Rail's famous High Speed Train (known as the Inter-City 125 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5348976.stm] ). Grange was also involved in the design of the innovative 1997 TX1 version of the famous London taxi-cab. He has carried out many commissions for Japanese companies.

Grange's designs have won ten Design Council Awards, the Duke of Edinburgh’s prize for Elegant Design in 1966, and in 2001 he was awarded the Prince Phillip [http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/Design-Council/1/Our-history/Prince-Philip-Designers-Prize/ Designers Prize] – an award honouring a lifetime achievement. He has won the Gold Medal of the Chartered Society of Designers, and is a member of the Royal Society of Arts’ élite Faculty of ‘Royal Designers for Industry’. Although he has no undergraduate degree, Grange has been awarded honorary Doctorate degrees by the Royal College of Art, De Montfort University and the Open University.

One quality of much of Grange’s design work is that it is not based on just the styling of a product. His design concepts arise from a fundamental reassessment of the purpose, function and use of the product. He has also said that his attitude to designing any product is that he wants it to be ‘a pleasure to use’. [Cross, N (2001) 'Achieving Pleasure From Purpose: the methods of Kenneth Grange, product designer', [http://www.ashgate.com/subject_area/art_history/art_journals.htm The Design Journal] , Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 48-58.]

The RSA site has an [http://www.rsa.org.uk/events/textdetail.asp?ReadID=878 audio] of Kenneth Grange in a design discussion with the illustrator Quentin Blake. There is also a [http://www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk/display.aspx?infid=3522 video] interview with Kenneth Grange discussing his design of the Signature Diamond loudspeakers for Bowers & Wilkins on their website [Interview with Kenneth Grange including video at [http://www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk/display.aspx?infid=3522 Bowers & Wilkins] ]

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