Billy bookcase, Gillis Lundgren, the designer who transformed Ikea in the 1950’s

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Gillis Lundgren, an industrial designer who helped make Ikea the largest furniture retailer in the world with his no-frills designs, most notably the Billy bookcase that millions of frugal book collectors have used to build their home libraries, has died at 86.

Mr. Lundgren joined Ikea in 1953 as the company’s fourth employee and advanced to become its first design manager. A draftsman with training in graphics, he designed hundreds of Ikea’s simple, portable furnishings and was credited with creating the company logo, whose blue and yellow colors were taken from the Swedish flag.Every year hundreds of millions of shoppers visit Ikea stores in pursuit of the economical establishment of a household.


Mr. Lundgren joined Ikea in 1953 as the company’s fourth employee and advanced to become its first design manager. A draftsman with training in graphics, he designed hundreds of Ikea’s simple, portable furnishings and was credited with creating the company logo, whose blue and yellow colors were taken from the Swedish flag.Every year hundreds of millions of shoppers visit Ikea stores in pursuit of the economical establishment of a household.

                                          http://www.ikea.com/assembly_instructions/billy-bookcase--202-cm__JXQ13_PUB.PDF
ikea-billy bookshelf proportions 


“I want to create solutions for everyday based on people’s needs,” Australian newspapers quoted him as saying. “My products are simple, practical and useful for everyone, no matter how old you are or what your life situation.”Gillis Lundgren was born in Lund, in southern Sweden, in 1929. He studied at the Malmo technical college and joined Ikea as a catalogue manager. A complete list of his survivors could not immediately be confirmed.He was credited with designing or helping design the vaguely mid-century modern Klippan sofa and Lövbacken table, originally sold in the 1950s under the name Lövet. Ikea product names, with their profusion of umlauts and unfamiliar sounds such as Ektorp Jennylunda chair) and Magnarp (a lamp), are the subject of cult fascination. (The company’s name is an acronym made from the initials of its founder, I.K., followed by the first letters of the names of the farm, Elmtaryd, and the town, Agunnaryd, where he grew up.) The Billy, one of the simpler words in the Ikea lexicon, was reportedly named for Billy Liljedahl, an advertising colleague of Mr. Lundgren’s who had expressed a desire for a “bookcase just for books.”


According to Quartz, Ikea produces 15 Billy bookcases per minute and had sold more than 41 million sets by 2009, after Billy turned 30 — the age at which some Billy owners may choose to graduate to a higher-end library. Many used Billy bookcases find their way to new homes, by way of Craigslist or as family hand-me-downs.

“I’m particularly happy that Billy has made it possible for so many people to build their own little library,” Mr. Lundgren once said. “In the old days, books were quite uncommon in most homes. These days, everyone has books, which is as it should be.”



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