© Kenneth Grange archive. Courtesy of Kenneth Grange, Pentagram and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Grange at the meeting table in the Pentagram studios in Needham Road, Notting Hill, late 1980s.
There is no doubt that you’ve encountered one of Kenneth Grange’s (1929–2024) designs, even if you don’t recognize his name. His innovative creations have touched the lives of almost every consumer worldwide and cemented him as one of the most revered and influential industrial designers of the modern age.
From domestic appliances for Kenwood and post boxes for Royal Mail to lighting for Anglepoise and the InterCity 125 high speed train for British Rail, Grange’s designs were key to the establishment of Britain’s post-war reputation as an international hub of design excellence. His creative endeavours took him across industries, turning his groundbreaking ideas and techniques into tangible products that helped to shape modern-day material culture.
On the anniversary of his death, we invite you to take a deeper look at his work in this extract from Kenneth Grange: Designing the Modern World, the definitive celebration of Grange’s stellar life and career. Lucy Johnston explores Grange’s time designing for Kodak, and the resulting Instamatic camera that became a cultural icon. Look inside Grange’s own notebook and discover how this remarkable partnership came to be.
From left to right: © Kenneth Grange archive. Courtesy of Kenneth Grange, Pentagram and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London / NRM York. One of many promotional posters created by British Rail to promote the Inter-City 125 service, and one of Grange’s favourites. / © Kenneth Grange archive. Courtesy of Kenneth Grange, Pentagram and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London / NRM York / Illustration: Per Arnoldi. Where commercial posters become art: another iconic design commissioned by British Rail, this one by renowned graphic artist Per Arnoldi celebrating ‘the age of the train’.
I became very well entrenched at Kodak – so that almost anything they could think of a designer doing, I did – be it an exhibition or an interior, and all this packaging for the cameras. Kenneth Grange
Grange’s first encounter with Kodak as a client came through his mentor and previous employer, Jack Howe, who had been commissioned to design the Kodak pavilion for the Brussels World’s Fair of 1958. Howe in turn brought in Grange, who had recently left Howe’s full-time employment to start his own small practice, to design the interior exhibition area of the pavilion for the camera displays.
During the on-site installation of the show in Brussels one evening in April 1958, Grange by chance briefly engaged in casual conversation with a representative from Kodak, who was there unpacking boxes of catalogues. Grange, having ‘no idea who this relaxed gentleman in shirt sleeves was’, happened to remark that the displays would ‘look a whole lot better if the cameras were not so damned ugly’. The gentleman politely asked Grange how much he might charge to design a better-looking camera, Grange responded with ‘a rather vague figure’ and the two went their separate ways. Having thought no further of this interaction, a few days later back home in London Grange was startled to receive a phone call from one Dr F. H. G. Pitt, head of the Developments Department at Kodak Ltd, the European division based in the UK. Pitt explained he had ‘been told by his Sales Director in Brussels’ that Grange was going to design a camera for him.
© Kenneth Grange archive. Courtesy of Kenneth Grange, Pentagram and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The Kodak Brownie 44B viewfinder camera followed the successful 44A (see p. 78), for which Grange won his first Design Centre Award from the CoID in 1960. Among other small differences, the 44B had a focusing rather than fixed lens, and a leather rather than plastic case.
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The first camera for which Pitt commissioned Grange’s input was to be an updated Brownie. The brief was to style a new body to better appeal to European tastes, working with existing functional components. At that time the professional Leica camera – with horizontal viewfinder, meaning the user held the camera up to their eyeline, rather than looking down into the top of the camera – was seen as highly desirable, so Kodak was keen to develop affordable products that offered this same experience. Additionally, Kodak had for a while been investigating new material options for its cameras, and Grange’s design would become the first to introduce a body made entirely of moulded plastic – and also, most notably, lenses made of plastic – meaning that both the manufacturing costs and price of the product could be much reduced.
Pitt was impressed with Grange’s ‘enthusiasm and diligence’ during the initial development work, and in January 1959 Grange was appointed ‘consultant for appearance design’, a role that would endure for the following two decades. The Brownie 44A was launched later that year, to be met with instant popularity, and the following year was selected from over 3,000 entries to win Grange his first Council of Industrial Design (CoID) award. As a result of Grange’s careful consideration of the material used, the 44A also became the first Kodak camera to make a profit for the company; previously the cameras produced by Kodak had been viewed by the company as ‘a loss-making product in order to sell film’. Sales of film and the corresponding print processing services would continue to remain by far the biggest and most lucrative part of the business, but Grange’s designs, combined with smart use of materials and innovative manufacturing, sparked awareness internally at Kodak that the cameras could be profitable products and a marketing opportunity in their own right.
© Kenneth Grange archive. Courtesy of Kenneth Grange, Pentagram and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Pages from Grange’s notebooks documenting one of many meetings at Kodak, and recording an early sketch of the Instamatic camera, which Grange was commissioned to refine for a European sensibility.
It is a generally accepted truism that the smaller the product, the greater the refinement. It is fastidious attention to detail that marks out the superlative from the good. This requires effort, which consumes time. Kenneth Grange
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Also in 1961, his design contributions having attracted the attention of the US parent company, Grange was invited to visit the New York offices and tour the factory, as part of Kodak’s international sales conference that year. His first-time crossing of the Atlantic brought with it an important career moment for Grange as he witnessed the ‘evidence of modernity’ presented by the American dream. This visit further cemented his profile at Kodak and from here he started to build up a trusted relationship with the team that enabled him to suggest new concepts. While the Brownie 44A and Kodaslide had been design updates of existing Kodak products, Grange’s next camera would be a completely new concept: the Brownie Vecta. From his visits to the print processing centre in Harrow, London, Grange had noted that the great majority of photos taken by customers were of people standing; however, because the traditional position in which to hold existing cameras meant the film was in landscape orientation, this resulted in ‘a small human subject in the centre of a wide empty frame’.
Grange therefore proposed a camera that would present the film in portrait orientation, enabling the human subject to be featured larger in the frame. The Kodak team approved his design proposal – an excellent demonstration of the strong, collaborative and trusted relationships Grange developed with his clients – and the Vecta was duly produced and launched in 1963, winning Grange and Kodak a third CoID award in 1964. The judges noted the smart feature of a single-piece moulded plastic body that ‘in styling terms is well ahead of its time’, as reported in Design magazine. But the camera had limited chance to prove itself in the market; the existing spool film type was soon to be superseded by Kodak’s introduction of the easy-load 126 cassette format, which profoundly influenced the future development of cameras worldwide. Although the magazine Design Week later celebrated the fact that ‘without such original pioneers who act on instinct … the world would be bereft of glorious mistakes’, Kodak’s marketing focus at the time moved on, and not long afterwards came the launch of the groundbreaking Instamatic camera, introducing amateur photography to a whole new audience.
© Kenneth Grange archive. Courtesy of Kenneth Grange, Pentagram and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Grange’s design for the Instamatic 33 series, which launched in 1968 and became an overnight sensation, rocketed Grange to new levels of design fame.
Setting to work on the Instamatic project, Grange collaborated closely with the engineering team to devise ‘a completely new look’ for this radical new amateur camera, one that hinted at the style of professional cameras, while remaining light, agile and affordable. Grange was dispatched to New York to present his design to the US team but, though they warmly welcomed him and approved of his design, they would go on to launch their own alternative version of the Instamatic for the US market, with Grange’s design launched into Europe.
His original Instamatic design, the 33 series, launched in September 1968 – followed by the 55 series in 1971, and all with various specifications of flash, lens quality and telephoto ability – became an immediate sensation and thereafter a pop culture icon. The Instamatic sold more than 30 million units across Europe during the production lifetime of the product.
© Kenneth Grange archive. Courtesy of Kenneth Grange, Pentagram and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. A contact sheet from a PR photo shoot for Japanese sewing machine manufacturer Maruzen with Grange the celebrity European innovator, to launch the Cub sewing machine.
The Instamatic – that really set me up. You need a few good mountains in your career and that was one of them for me. Kenneth Grange
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Market research increasingly played a central role in the product development process at Kodak, perhaps more so than at any other of Grange’s clients; into the 1970s it was reported that the amateur camera was increasingly being viewed as a statement of personal style, so looks mattered equally to functionality and handling. Once the Instamatic was established, Grange was redeployed to develop a range of experimental designs in anticipation of a new camera series that would feature the next film innovation from Kodak: the smaller, slimmer 110 cassette. As with all his client projects throughout his career, Grange and his team would proceed to make a comprehensive series of scale models – rather than simply relying on drawings – which could then be used more actively in market research for realistic handling. None of this experimental series ever came to market in the forms presented by Grange, but learnings from the research study were applied more widely.
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Grange later recalled that ‘for a while there I would design everything for them, whatever they needed’, which included not just cameras but also packaging, graphics and even the interior of Kodak’s UK visitors centre. He would also comment on how influential his time with Kodak had been to his personal development, in terms of his early understanding of ‘the power of mass production to enable good design and style to be truly affordable and accessible’.
Words by Lucy Johnston
