Industrial design wiz Brooks Stevens dies

Milwaukee Sentinel, Jan 5, 1995 by CROCKER STEPHENSON

Brooks Stevens, the pioneer industrial designer whose streamlined vision shaped our daily lives in ways as ordinary as Miller High Life beer cans, as extraordinary as the Hiawatha train and as whimsical as the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, died Wednesday. He was 83.

Stevens, of Mequon, was one of 10 industrial designers and the only non-Easterner who in 1944 founded the prestigious Industrial Designers Society of America. His firm, Brooks Stevens Design Associates, is based in Mequon.

Stevens' designs, which he produced for some 585 companies throughout the world, have become icons of 20th-century America. They include:

Cars: Stevens contributed to 46 automotive designs between 1940 and 1980. For Willys-Overland Co., he designed a civilian version of the war-born Jeep. Stevens designed all postwar Jeep station wagons, including the Jeep Cherokee.

He designed Studebakers, Volkswagens and Alfa Romeos. His Excalibur luxury touring car originally was a show car for Studebaker. When that company ceased operations in 1964, his sons formed the Excalibur Automobile Corp. of Milwaukee.

Trains: Stevens loved trains and designed everything from the locomotive to porters' uniforms and club car napkins for the Milwaukee Road's Pioneer, Hiawatha and Olympian Hiawatha, including the aerodynamic Skytop Lounge car.

Motorcycles: His 1950 design for Harley-Davidson Inc. is the model for today's Harley- Davidson Heritage Classic model.

Boats: In 1934, working for the Evinrude division of Outboard Marine Corp., he transformed the loud outboard motor with its exposed parts into something beautiful, with sleek, streamlined cowling. He designed in 1954 a line of 52-foot enclosed bridge deck cruisers for Chris Craft Corp.

Packaging: Stevens shaped Miller Brewing Co.'s corporate identity, developing everything from the company's logos, bottles and caps, trucks and even parade floats. It was Stevens who during the 1950s took Miller High Life cans from black to white to gold.

He developed and designed corporate identities for 3M Co., Cutler-Hammer Co., Allen-Bradley Co. and Briggs & Stratton Corp. and designed the first wide- mouthed peanut butter jar, for Holsum Foods of Waukesha.

Appliances: He made clothes dryers a marketable product in 1936 by adding a window to the machine as well as fluted panels and matching knobs for Hamilton Industries Inc. of Two Rivers.

He designed the first commercially successful steam iron and the first automatic wringers for washing machines. He was the first to design refrigerators with colors other than white.

His designs include the Insinkerator, portable grills, side-opening toasters, Mirro electric fryers and cookware and the first completely enclosed portable radios.

Farm equipment: The tractors he designed for Allis-Chalmers were so streamlined that he claimed farmers drove them to church on Sundays.

Lawn mowers: He designed the base and enclosure for the first rotary blade power motor and began designing gasoline engines for Briggs & Stratton in 1946.

Stevens said one reason he was so prolific is that he remained in the Midwest an abundant source of product manufacturers for virtually all of his life.

Stevens was born in Milwaukee June 7, 1911, and graduated from the old Milwaukee Country Day School.

He studied architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., but took his father's advice and entered what was in the early 1930s an emerging field: industrial design. He opened his first office in 1933 in downtown Milwaukee.

Stevens underwent open-heart surgery in 1978, and in the 1980s, he lost sight in one eye. His son, Kipp Stevens, of Milwaukee, took over management of the design firm, and Stevens focused his energies teaching at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design.

In 1985, Stevens received MIAD's first honorary doctorate for industrial design. MIAD is home to the Brooks Stevens Design Center, a gallery featuring his contributions to transportation.

His collection of cars is on display at the Brooks Stevens Automotive Museum, 10325 N. Port Washington Road, Mequon.

Stevens' death Wednesday at Columbia Hospital is believed to have been caused by heart failure, said his son, William C. "Steve" Stevens of Milwaukee.

Besides Kipp and Steve Stevens, he is survived by his wife, Alice K. Stevens; a son, David B. Stevens of Oconomowoc; and a daughter, Sandra A. Stevens of Burnsville, Minn.

Visitation will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday at Forest Home Cemetery Chapel, 2405 W. Forest Home Ave., followed by the funeral service at noon. Interment in the family plot will be private.