Kenneth Grange, who has died aged 95, was the leading British product designer of the second half of the 20th century. Even if unaware of his name, most people in Britain are familiar with his output: the Kenwood Chef food mixer, the Kodak Instamatic camera, the Ronson Rio hairdryer, the Morphy Richards iron. These everyday objects are part of all our histories. Grange was also responsible for the restyling of the InterCity 125 high-speed train and the 1997 TX1 version of the London taxi.
He was a tall, handsome, ebullient man, a joker with that element of inner moral purpose often found in the designers of his postwar generation. He grew up imbued with a determination to make the world a better place visually, his emphasis always on functional efficiency. Grange was a master at reassessing usage, but he also viewed design in terms of sheer enjoyment. He wanted us to share in the surprising grace of the experience as the 125 train comes hurtling down the track.
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Through the 70s Grange was occupied with the most high profile of his design commissions: the aerodynamics, interior layout and exterior shaping of the nose cone of British Rail’s High Speed Train (HST). The InterCity 125 was a key element in BR’s strategy to woo passengers away from cars and planes and back on to the trains. However the first HST prototype they came up with was, in Grange’s opinion, “a lumpish, brutish thing”.
He realised he could only improve the appearance by first tackling the aerodynamics. On his own initiative (and at his own expense) he spent a week at night working with a consultant engineer at Imperial College London, where there was a wind tunnel. In the course of these experiments they developed a number of new ideas, getting rid of the buffers, hiding the couplings in the underside of the nose cone, and giving the train a more futuristic look.
It was launched in 1976 with its radical, dynamically angled nose design. Grange was always careful to give credit to the expertise of the engineers he worked with. All the same, it was his major triumph and a lasting symbol of the best of mid-20th-century British design. The HST – still in use today on selected passenger services after almost 50 years – transformed the public experience of travelling by train.
