Oh, inevitably for a blog, this is about web site design.
Confidence in manufactured physical objects is more interesting. Discuss.
Raymond Loewy on a good day - The Honeywell Round.[1] The standard little round thermostat. It's still manufactured.[1]
Raymond Loewy on a bad day - the first attempt to make a steam locomotive look streamlined by adding a sheet metal body.[3] This bad idea caught on in the UK, for some reason, resulting in a whole series of difficult to maintain locomotives.
Eventually he designed the look of an electric locomotive, the GG-1, which was very successful, looked very good, and had good access to the important working parts.
For a good sense of how to think about industrial design, here's Lowey's autobiography, "Never Leave Well Enough Alone".[1] Look for the before and after pictures of common objects he redesigned. In most cases, sales went up.
As a bad example, see "Design for Dreaming", a 1956 General Motors promotion around the time the auto industry was reaching peak chrome and peak tailfin. This also introduced the first self-driving car, the Firebird 2.[2] (The self-driving didn't actually work in the Firebird 2. It did work in the Firebird 3, on a test track equipped with a guide wire.)
