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January 16th 2013
We were delighted to hear the news of Industrial Designer Kenneth Grange’s recent Knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List.
Whilst well known within design circles, the soon to be ‘Sir Kenneth’ is truly one of the UK’s unsung design hero’s and this is all the more remarkable when you consider just what he has designed… The Kenwood Chef; the Courier razor; the Kodak Instamatic camera; the Ronson Rio hairdryer; the Imperial typewriter; the Morphy Richards iron, these are all design classics of their time and household names that, in some cases are still very relevant today.
More recently his London Taxi, Adshel bus shelter, anglepoise lamps and B&W loudspeaker’s have all found their way into our lives, mostly without us knowing. The next time you pick up a shopping basket in Boots you are using a Kenneth Grange design.
In fact, such is the list of Grange’s inspired product designs there is scant space in this piece to do it justice. However, there is room to discuss his design of the High Speed Train (HST) later to become known as The Inter City 125.
Throughout the 1960’s and 70’s British Rail were a remarkably progressive organisation. Inspired by the double arrow logo, BR rolled out the most comprehensive corporate identity ever seen in the UK. From locomotives and rolling stock to uniforms and timetables a team of designers from the Design Research Unit worked closely with BR management. The said management wanted to bring back the golden age of rail travel and this could mean only one thing; high-speed trains.
When BR approached Kenneth Grange he was initially under the impression that his work on the HST project would be to add a bit of polish – a tidy up of the overall appearance. How wrong he was as his role became pivotal in not only terms of aesthetics but technical detail that in many ways bordered on the scientific.
When the existing design was shown to Grange it’s fair to say that it didn’t exactly hit the spot. So, without telling BR, Grange decided to ‘have a crack’ at designing a new shape of train. Pooling his creative design resources with those of an engineer and using the wind tunnel at Imperial College Grange worked on a shape that would cut cleanly through the air at a speed of 125 mph while also keeping the train clean.
When the day came to present to BR what they thought would be just a new livery they got a whole lot more than they had bargained for. As this was the aforementioned progressive BR Grange was given a fair hearing and the rest is as they say history.
HST represented a giant leap for British Rail. The organisation now had a serious proposition to encourage people away from cars and aircraft and back onto rails. The distinctive clean lined design of HST brought the glamour back to rail travel that had been missing since the demise of the golden age of steam. This clever design and engineering masterpiece delivered a wholesale change to the way in which Britain travelled by rail and it is testament to Kenneth Grange that the Inter City 125 still carries passengers across the UK mainline today.
Now in his 80’s Kenneth Grange is still designing products that make a difference to people’s lives. Without question his infectious curiosity and creative guile should be bottled for the nation. It is only fitting then that the nation has now recognised the genius that is Kenneth Grange.
