Production designer Barbara Ling admitted her influences for the Gotham City design came from "neon-ridden Tokyo and the Machine Age.
A generation of designers working in architecture, advertising, packaging, interior design, graphic and scenic design came to believe that commonplace goods and appliances, from automobiles to pencil sharpeners, could benefit from contemporary veneers — and some serious retooling.
The legendary book-cover designer and writer Chip Kidd, who brought Mendelsund into the business, once said that design came so effortlessly to Mendelsund that he must be the love child of Paul Rand and Alvin Lustig.
The first major test of Yasuhisa Toyota's acoustical design came, appropriately, with "The Rite of Spring".
The design came to be called the Garnier Limb, after the Treesort's owner.
The design came out of a child's coloring book, Charles Betollati said, "but it really works".
But it was in the capitalist commercial art world that poster art and design came into its own.
In fact, Mr. Stingel's design came from Durkan Patterned Carpet, a company that serves large hotels and casinos.
Ms. Della Femina's first real foray into clothing design came last summer, when she took her sketches to a seamstress.
His most accomplished design came late in the lineup, a black jacket intricately cut out like Chinese latticework.
It's worth noting that Mr. Calatrava's design came about in an old-fashioned way: a client hired an architect.
