The rest of my Top 10 list from the book 50 Designers You Should Know.
6. Arne Jacobsen, 1902-1971. Yet Arne Jacobsen himself, one of the most influential Scandinavian designers of the 20th century, resisted the term "designer." Although he created timeless modern seating furniture such as the Egg and the Seven, he always saw himself as an architect. In fact, outside Denmark, his architectural work, which includes private residences and settlements as well as public buildings, has rather unjustly taken a backseat. His constructions were part of the pioneering achievements of Scandinavian modern art before World War II. His visionary designs for the circular House of the Future (1929), a flat-roofed building constructed of glass and concrete with a heliport, and the Bellavista settlement (1931-1934) in particular made Jacobsen a forerunner of the International Style.
7. Charles & Ray Eames. Charles Eames, 1907-1978. Bernice Alexandra "Ray" Kaiser, 1912-1988. They were not the first to experiment with molded plywood, however Charles Eames adn his congenial partner and wife, Ray, were able to literally bend the wood into new shapes and change furniture design of the 20th century forever with their designs. In 1941, in their apartment in Los Angeles, the newly married couple set up a workshop with their homemade plywood press - the Kazam! Machine - named for the magic spell "Ala Kazam!" (hocus pocus). Of course it was not magic; it was heat, pressure and glue that bent the thin veneer plywood into sweeping complex curves in the press.
8. Eero Saarinen, 1910-1961. Eero Saarinen's architectural masterpiece is the TWA Terminal at New York's JFK airport; his greatest triumph in the field of design is the Tulip Chair. If one considers the flowing, curved lines of the departure hall and the sculpturally shaped seat of the Tulip Chair, one is struck by their expressive, organic design, which was futuristic-looking in those days. It was thus with good reason that a slightly modified version of the Tulip Chair found itself on the set of the Spaceship Enterprise in the science fiction television series Star Trek.
9. Verner Panton, 1926-1998. Verner Panton's colourful, sculptural designs make him one of the most innovative designers of the 20th century and also the enfant terrible of Danish design. With his furniture, based on geometric shapes, mainly in bright colours, and made out of plastic, he broke with the sleek naturalism of classical Scandinavian design.
10. Karim Rashid, 1960- . Karim Rashid is one of the most productive designers of his generation. He has created over 3,000 designs for numerous famous companies such as Artemide, Cappellini, Magis, LaCie, Samsung, Veuve Cliquot and Swarowski, and has won more than 300 international design prizes, such as the Good Design Award (South Africa), the Good Design Award (Japan), the red dot design award and the Design Plus Award. His most popular products include the Garbo Can trash basket and the Oh Chair plastic chair. Rashid's interior designs for the Morimoto Restaurant in Philadelphia and the Semiramis Hotel in Athens also won prizes, as did exhibitions for Deutsche Bank and Audi. His works can be found in the collection of renowned museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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