Raymond Loewy

For Skylab, Loewy's team proposed arrangements to promote both sociability and privacy among astronauts, argued for a viewing porthole, and suggested ways to handle nutrition, hygiene, and elimination in weightlessness.³ According to Milestones of Space (ed. Neufeld), before Skylab, NASA designed spacecraft like aircraft cockpits, with basic life support as the guiding principle.³ According to quoted commentator via Gizmodo, Loewy's work is credited with laying a foundation for future space station design.³

According to loewy-raymond.de, the MAYA principle, 'Most Advanced Yet Acceptable', is associated with Loewy and urges innovative products that do not overwhelm users.⁴ Despite admiration for his streamlining, Loewy's work has often been criticized as superficial, according to a review by Martina Blum.² At the beginning of his career, Loewy supported the idealistic view that industrial design could educate the consumer and contribute to beneficial social planning, but he later came to deplore the misuse of design by the commercial system in the 1970s.²

John Wall's 2018 book Streamliner analyzes Loewy's image-making, branding, and self-presentation, arguing that Loewy designed his image as much as the products with which he is associated.⁵ A reviewer of Wall's book notes that anecdotes about Loewy were repeatedly reused in press profiles and cautions that Wall's account relies on Loewy's own narratives and largely familiar sources.⁵ Scholarship on Loewy includes The Designs of Raymond Loewy (1975), Angela Schonberger's Raymond Loewy: Pioneer of American Industrial Design (1990), Glenn Porter's Raymond Loewy: Designs for a Consumer Culture (2002), and John Wall's Streamliner (2018).⁵ Glenn Porter's 2002 book accompanied a Hagley exhibition held in 2002–2003 and drew on material recently added to the museum's collection; Martina Blum notes that it was not intended as either a biography or a history of Loewy's organization.²