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.”
A simple gesture of opening and closing the drawer changes the skin of the drawer
