It's hard to imagine anything more at odds with the hi-tech, microwave, designer-kitchen age than the Aga cooker. It's formidably heavy. It's far from cheap to buy and install. And yet its popularity has grown and grown since it came to England from Sweden in 1929. More than just a commercial success story, it has come to symbolise the quintessence of upper-and middle-class rural life. In Chiswick and the Isle of Dogs it suggests the warm heart of the English country home. How did it happen?
Coca-Cola started out as a syrup into which you squirted carbonated water. The bottle designed to contain the resulting fizzy drink became one of the most famous pieces of packaging in the world. It was designed in 1916 as a result of a competition. Despite changes of flavour, the introduction of cans and relentless global competition from rivals, the heavy glass bottle with the archaic-looking trademark still symbolises the American dream. Accordingly it inspires approval or hostility - depending on taste.
Hitler called it the 'strength through joy' car, and he meant it to be one of the engineering triumphs of the Third Reich. But it was the British army which put it into production, after the war. Rootes and Ford - offered the chance to manufacture it - turned the car down; they didn't think it had a future. Twenty million Beetles later, it's still being produced in Mexico. How did the noisy, heavy, distinctly odd-looking motor car with its roots in a Nazi past become lovable, a family friend, the sort of car Walt Disney made films about? So that it really did become a 'people's car'.
It was designed for the King of Spain to sit on during the Barcelona World's Fair in 1929. When the designer, MIES VAN DER ROHE , found a casual passerby sitting on one, he ordered him towards the more appropriate benches which he'd designed outside for people like him. The elitist image has never worn off. Expensive, austere, it's as much a work of architecture in its way as Mies's influential if stark buildings. It's a chair to admire rather than settle back in. It's still very much in production, an icon with its roots in the Bauhaus and the heroic age of modern design.
By the early 1930s, the London Underground had become exceedingly complicated. The classic map used today was an unsolicited attempt to make the system easier to understand and use. It became one of British graphic design's greatest triumphs. It helped give London Transport an identity, and has been copied by transit systems throughout the world. It has absorbed all the additions to the system since it was first sketched out in a school exercise book not by a designer, but by an obscure draughtsman, Harry Beck.
They were designed by a tailor in Reno, Nevada, for a customer who was a miner. Levi-Strauss and Company patented them in 1873. They have powerful competitors in the jeans war, but the company spent millions persuading the world that their product is the authentic, legendary jean.
Looking back at the 1980s it will be hard to miss 50 million Sony Walkmans. The machine's success is a symbol of Japan's post-war economic miracle. Why are the Japanese so good at making intricate hi-tech products? Design Classics looks at the philosophy behind modern Japanese design to reveal roots deep in the Japanese consciousness.
Supermods, skinheads, pop stars and tennis heroes - all of them have worn the shirt that takes its name from the legendary British tennis player. How did a sports shirt become a fashion icon? What does its laurel wreath emblem signify? Was it really the first casual shirt? Fred Perry , business rival Rene Lacoste and journalist Stuart Cosgrove try to solve the riddle of the old skinhead saying: 'shirt by Fred, 'nuff said'.
The red British telephone box has joined a select group of objects which have become symbols of Britain. The majority have now been removed in the name of modernisation and this classic piece of design is now sold at auction for other uses.
Most large companies adopt a symbol to identify themselves and sell their product. Shelf's is one of the most famous. But it was selected at random and had already been used as a symbol for centuries. Its casual use during this century would scandalise any of today's corporate image makers. Despite this it has become one of the most successful pieces of graphic design. With Evert Endt , Christopher Frayling , Nicholas Jenkins , Wally Olins , Michael Peters and Stephen Calloway.
The Electraglide is Harley-Davidson's definitive motorcycle, with a design history which goes back to the days of the wild west. The programme charts the origins and history of the Electraglide and explores the powerful mythology which surrounds it.