MAYA Jesus

Jesus pushes us hard, but not beyond what is attainable.

Picture the Exxon logo. A Greyhound bus. The Coca-Cola bottle. A Frigidaire oven. The blue nose of the president's plane, Air Force One.

What do they have in common?

Only one thing: an industrial designer named Raymond Loewy.

Loewy was an immigrant who arrived in Manhattan in 1919, dreaming that New York would be an elegant and stylish place. When he arrived, he was disappointed. What Loewy found was a grungy product of the industrial age -- "bulky, noisy and complicated."

Loewy decided to change things, designing products that ranged from Lucky Strike cigarette packs to International Harvester tractors. He did "more than almost any person in the 20th century to shape the aesthetic of American culture."

During the Kennedy administration, Loewy complained to a friend in the White House that the commander in chief's airplane looked "gaudy." Determined to improve it, he spent several hours on the floor of the Oval Office, cutting up shapes of blue paper along with President Kennedy. Finally, ...