This article forms part of the Decorative and Applied Arts Encyclopedia, a master reference hub providing a structured overview of design history, materials, movements, and practitioners.
Egmont Arens (1888 – 1966) was an American industrial designer and theoretician.
Biography
Arens was the sports editor on the Albuquerque Tribune-Citizen newspaper from 1916; in 1917, he settled in New York, managing his own Washington Square bookstore. From 1918, he printed newspapers under the name Flying Stag Press; with interest in art, he became editor of magazines Creative Arts and Playboy (the first American magazine specializing in Modern art—not the Hefner publication of today). He subsequently was editor of Vanity Fair: began his career as an industrial designer at advertising agency Earnest Elmo Calkins where, in 1929, he established an industrial styling department dedicated to what he termed ‘consumer engineering’; was influential through his writings in the 1930s, which emphasized the relationship between marketing and design.
Industrial Design
In 1929 Arens became Director of the Industrial Styling Division for the firm of Calkins and Holden. He was president of the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen.
In 1935 he founded his own design company. He designed everything from toys, boats, aircraft, kitchen appliances, lamps and lampshades, beer cans, plastic containers, cigarette lighters, jukeboxes, watches and baby carriages. He also worked on interior design for stores and manufacturing plants. His clients included General Electric, Fairchild Aircraft, Anheuser Busch, and The Coca-Cola Company.
Arens designed a beach chair in 1935 and aluminium furniture for the Colombian Rope Company in 1944–45. In 1931, he designed fountain pens for Waterman Pens, and in 1960 a bottle for Colgate-Palmolive. He also created the ice-cube dispenser.
Arens designed the KitchenAid Streamliner Meat Slicer and re-designed the Stand Mixer. In 2007, KitchenAid said of the Stand Mixer, “The first mixer was introduced in 1919, but it was Arens’ 1937 Model K design that captivated consumers.”
Consumer Engineering
Arens developed the use of “appetite appeal” on the packaging. He emphasized the importance of “eye-catching” colours, primarily red and yellow, and of placing photographs of food on food packaging. He designed the packaging for Eight O’Clock Coffee and Marcal Tissue Packs.
His clients included J. C. Penney, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A & P), the Reynolds Metal Company, Philip Morris, and the National Biscuit Company. In addition, he wrote “Color Values in Television” in 1949 and “Packaging for Color Television” in 1954.
With Roy Sheldon, Arens co-authored the book Consumer Engineering: A New Technique for Prosperity, published in 1932. His article, “Stop Traffic With Your Package”, was in the book, Modern Food Marketing, published in 1949.
In Consumer Engineering, Sheldon and Arens wrote that business must accept the “world as it is” and then see not threats but opportunities. There was a “new world” to be charted and explored. In the first years of the Great Depression, this view was intentionally upbeat. Problems could be turned to advantage; overproduction and under-consumption could be solved by knowing the needs and wishes of consumers, by good design and use of colour, by predicting fashion, not fads, and by what is now known as “planned obsolescence.” In the book, they wrote: “Would any change in the goods or the habits of the people speed up their consumption? Can newer models displace them? Can artificial obsolescence be created?”
The paragraph ends with a mission statement: “Consumer engineering does not end until we can consume all we can make.”
Sources
Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing. https://amzn.to/3ElmSlL
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