In a career that has now spanned 80 years Kenneth Grange has shaped the world around us by giving form to everything from bus shelters and parking metres to shavers and electric appliances for the kitchen. As one of Britain’s most prolific industrial designers the products Grange has designed such as Kodak cameras, Kenwood food mixers, Parker pens, Wilkinson Sword razors, Morphy Richard irons and Imperial typewriters, are familiar in most households or offices.

Grange was born in the East End of London in 1929 to a police officer and factory worker. His family moved to Wembley during the second world war and his professional training began with technical drawing which he learned at elementary school and then at the Willesden Schools of Arts and Crafts. He put these skills into practice while on National Service in the late 1940s, serving in the Royal Engineers as a technical illustrator.

Grange then worked, primarily as a draughtsman, in a number of architects’ offices. For Gordon and Ursula Bowyer he contributed to the Sports Pavilion for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and with architect and product designer Jack Howe he gained further experience of exhibition design, and began to see at first hand the working relationships between designers and manufacturers. It was while at Howe’s studio that Grange was given his first large-scale independent commission, to design an exhibition for the Atomic Energy Authority in Geneva about the use of atomic power in peacetime, which allowed him to set up his own practice, Kenneth Grange Design, in 1958.

He achieved his first product design commission while designing the interior of a pavilion for photography brand Kodak for the World Fair in Brussels. While working on the finishing touches to the pavilion he remarked to a man working nearby that the display of the cameras would be greatly improved if the cameras themselves were designed better. Unaware that he had been speaking to the sales director of Kodak he was surprised to receive a call from their London office saying that they understood that he was going to design a camera for them. This led to a long term relationship with Kodak and the design of the Kodak Brownie 44a, the first camera the business launched to be profitable in its own right, not just from the sales of the film it would use.

In the1950s Grange became part of a group of designers that were often asked by industry or the government to pitch for projects in the public domain, and as such Grange’s work became an essential part of what made Britain look modern. Grange would go on to design the distinctive tear-drop shaped London parking meters for Venner.

The Chefette was designed just as the miniaturisation of household appliances such as radios and televisions had become a focus of many manufacturers. This design allows the user to use the same machinery for different purposes, the motor of the mixer works both as a handheld device and as a handsfree mixer, handy in ever-more compact kitchens. Grange has always been committed to designing hard wearing products and a responsible use of materials, many of his products for Kenwood are still in use today.

In 1972 Grange joined forces with graphic designer Alan Fletcher, architect Theo Crosby, writer Colin Forbes and artist Mervyn Kurlansky to set up the creative agency Pentagram. Still existing to this day Pentagram is run as a number of separate studios that support one another and each individual partner is completely free to take on what jobs they choose.