Teague is a global design consultancy headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Established in 1926 by Walter Dorwin Teague, Teague is known for its design contributions through the disciplines of product design, interaction design, environmental design, and mechanical design. The company is privately held and is particularly recognized for its work in aviation and consumer goods, done for clients such as The Boeing Company, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung and Panasonic.
Teague's early role in consumer culture is most popularly associated with designs such as the first Polaroid camera, the UPS truck, Texaco service stations, and the Pringles Chips canister. The Xbox and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner headline Teague's post-2000 design work.
History In the mid-1920s, Walter Dorwin Teague, an illustrator and typographer, was one of a group of individuals interested in pioneering the design of products for manufacturers as a distinct occupation. He departed from an advertising career at New York-based Calkins & Holden to establish Teague as a sole-proprietorship in 1926.The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts, Gordon Campbell 2006 ed., Oxford University Press; Volume 2, p 437. Teague's value proposition was to improve the appearance, function and sales of clients' products, thereby strengthening businesses' brand image while translating the era's cultural context through tangible objects.Seldes, Gilbert, "Profiles: Industrial Classicist - Profile of Walter Dorwin Teague," New Yorker, December 15, 1934."Walter Dorwin Teague: Industrial Designer Remembered," Business News - San Diego, December 19, 1983.Industrial Design: A New Profession, Minutes from Museum of Modern Art conference, New York, NY, 1946. MOMA archive 45.1 S624 1946
Early Expansion Although product design culture was still limited to the wealthy throughout the 1930s, Teague pursued strategic relationships with businesses offering products to benefit the masses, citing a loss of concern for appearance in manufacturing when the Industrial Revolution replaced craftsmanship with machinery.Woodham, Jonathan M., "Twentieth-Century Design," from Oxford History of Art. Oxford University Press (USA), 1997. Teague, Walter Dorwin, "Design as a Construction Stimulant in Marketing," Reprinted from the Seventh International Management Congress, Washington DC, 1938. In 1927, Teague was commissioned by Eastman Kodak to design cameras, and by the following year had co-located with Kodak in Upstate New York.Teague, Walter Dorwin, "A Quarter Century of Industrial Design in the United States," Art & Industry, London, 1951. During what would become a thirty-year relationship, Teague designed some of Kodak's products, including the Baby Brownie, Super Six-20, Kodak Medalist, and the Kodak Bantam Special, one of the most popular cameras ever produced."Teague80: 8 Decades of Influential Design." Published and printed by Walter Dorwin Teague Associates, copyright 2006, Seattle. The Baby Brownie had outsold any other camera ever made.
Teague expanded its portfolio in the early 1930s with: the Marmon 16, the first production automobile conceived by an industrial designer; 32 design patterns for Steuben Glass, a division of Corning Glass Works; and the design of passenger cars and diners for the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroads. By 1938, Teague's office grew to 55 employees, including architects, engineers, 3D artists and industrial designers. Teague had also signed its first highly lucrative design retainer contract with Polaroid, culminating in the later development of the Land Camera, the first camera able to develop its own prints, introduced in 1948.Abercrombie, Stanley, "Fifty Years of Interior Design," Interiors, New York, June 1977.
Environmental Design and Corporate Identity Teague's product designs for Kodak evolved into the design of Kodak's offices, retail stores, and exhibitions at the New York World's Fair. The concept of "corporate identity" emerged from this cross-disciplined work of commercial design and the applied arts and science of creating the human-designed environment. Initiating the first corporate identity program of its kind, Teague created a full branding image for Texaco, including the design of full station layouts for Texaco service stations, pumps, trucks, cans and signs.DiTullo, Michael, “Last Man Standing: 80 years of Teague Design,” Core77, August 2006. Considered Art Deco icons of their era, more than 20,000 of these Texaco stations had been built worldwide by 1960.
World Fairs In the 1930s and 1940s, Teague parlayed the new concept of corporate identity into designing corporate industrial exhibits for companies such as Con Edison, Du Pont, Kodak, US Steel, and the National Cash Register Company. In 1933, Teague designed numerous displays for the Ford Motor Company at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition, and expanded its showcase of architectural savvy through the design of the Texaco exhibition hall at the 1935 Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas, Texas, as well as the Ford pavilion for the California Pacific International Exposition in San Diego, California (now housing the San Diego Aerospace Museum).Keyes, Jacqueline Abbot, "The Fair - Demonstration of Modern Methods of Living," Art& Industry, December 1936.
Having designed multiple exhibitions at the New York World's Fair, including the Kodak Hall of Lights and the National Cash Register Building, Walter Dorwin Teague was invited to serve on its Board of Design, as well as design the Ford Exposition Building at New York's World Fair of 1939.Watts, Al, "Jet-Age Group Turns 50," Seattle Business Magazine, June 14, 1976.Woodham, Jonathan M. A Dictionary of Modern Design. Oxford University Press, 2005. Teague would also later design the U.S. Science Center for the World's Fair in Seattle, as well as the "House of the Future" for the Festival of Gas at the 1964 World's Fair.Votolato, Gregory. American Design in the Twentieth Century. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998. .
Structure and Scope By the 1940s, product design culture had only just begun to come of age through consideration of a product's functional, technological, cultural and economic factors. In 1945, a year after establishing an engineering division, Teague's corporate structure changed from a sole proprietorship to a partnership, allowing senior staff to be partners in the company. Profit-sharing increased employee retention and pride in ownership in the company encouraged project-successes.Biographical Notes of Walter Dorwin Teague; Walter Dorwin Teague Associates, New York, 1951; Print, Teague Archives, accessed 2010 and 2011
Diversifying the firm's portfolio, Teague's projects included packaging for Ac'cent, a product for the International Minerals and Chemical Corporation, equipment design for the Navy Bureau of Ordinance of the U.S. Navy, design of the UPS delivery truck "Walter Dorwin Teague: 2007 Personal Recognition Winner," Industrial Designers Society of America, http://idsa.org, last accessed February 2, 2012. and the visual styling of Steinway Pianos, the first of which is on display at the Smithsonian museum (as of 2012). "Building a Relationship: The Steinways and the Smithsonian," Excerpt from The William Steinway Diary: 1861-1896 of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, William Steinway Diary Project, http://americanhistory.si.edu (Last accessed February 2, 2012).
The 1940s also commenced Teague's collaborative relationship with The Boeing Company, which began in 1946"Design Firm's Boeing Link in 20th Year," Seattle Daily Times, May 28, 1965. and continues to date, as of January 2012. (See Aviation.)
Post-War Decades: Product Packaging and Interior Design Products of mass-consumption and the expansion of pop culture in the 1950s strengthened the influence of industrial design in both public consciousness and big business. By the late 1950s, Teague expanded its work in product packaging design, creating a new corporate identity for Schaefer Beer. This early work would later lead to projects with Ivory soap, Downy, Comet cleanser, Cheetos, Scope mouthwash, Head & Shoulders, and Chiffon margarine. With offices in New York and Seattle,"Industrial Design," Luce Press Clipping, New York, NY, April 1963. and design labs in several domestic and overseas locations, Teague strengthened its application of package design through the consumer revolution of the 1960s, forming lasting relationships with both Procter & Gamble and the General Foods Corporation.Duggan, Dennis, "Design--From Tiny Tubes to Giant Jets," Newsday - The Long Island Newspaper, May 11, 1970.
The Oil Crisis and anger toward American imperialism waned the mass-impact of industrial design for nearly two decades. During the early 1970s, the majority of Teague's work was in architectural and interior design. In addition to banks, showrooms, museums, corporate headquarters, supermarkets and government facilities, Teague's largest space of interior design was for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Air Force Academy in Colorado, where design work covered 3.5 million square feet of space, including dining halls, dormitory rooms, classrooms, and more than 60,000 objects."Air Force Academy Biggest Design Job," (UPI) Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1971. By 1977, Walter Dorwin Teague Associates was larger than any of its competitors, employing roughly 150 designers, architects and technicians.
As the Information Age and its new media culture surfaced, Teague continued its collaborative work with key clients, such as Procter & Gamble and Boeing, and established new client relationships that resulted in numerous package designs now considered classics, including the Lays Potato Chips and Frito Corn Chips bags, the Pringles Potato Chips canister, Ivory soap, and the Scope Mouthwash Bottle."Styles, William, "These Potato Chips are Reconstituted," The Cincinnati Post, May 7, 1969. Other notable post-1975 design achievements include the Kenworth Sleeper truck, the first truck designed to house a sleeper cabin, developed in 1976; and the crew quarters for the NASA space station, designed in 1987."Smith, Susan, "Having an Eye for an Air of Comfort," Seattle Post Intelligencer, April 21, 1989.
Aviation Teague's history in aviation began with Boeing in 1946 when Teague designed the aircraft interior for the Boeing Stratocruiser. The inverted figure-8 double deck fuselage provided 6,600 feet of interior space designed specifically for luxury air travel. The Stratocruiser's interior later inspired the interior cabins of both the Boeing 707 and 747 planes.
The 707 aircraft model marked a "new flight era" for passengers, with more windows, a passenger service unit, illuminated seat-belt signs, and 1,300 square feet of interior space.Watkin, Richard, "Aviation High Style," The New York Times, May 27, 1956. Boeing's 747, the world's first wide-body commercial jetliner, which was two and a half times the size of the 707, was used to create the Reagan-era Air Force One in 1988. The Boeing-Teague team's Air-Force One project received tremendous media attention throughout its development as the aircraft designed to transport the US President and White House staff, and included 100 telephones, two fully equipped kitchens, 16 televisions, seven bathrooms, 31 executive sleeper suites, and other extravagant amenities."Bartel, Bill, and Tom Webb, "White House in the Sky," The Seattle Times, September 25, 1988.