Donald Sidney Deskey was born in
Blue Earth, Minnesota. He studied architecture at the
University of California, but did not follow that profession, becoming instead an artist and a pioneer in the field of
Industrial design. He attended the 1925
Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, which influenced his approach to design. He went on to establish a design consulting firm in New York City and later the firm of Deskey-Vollmer (in partnership with
Phillip Vollmer), which specialized in furniture and textile design. His designs in this era progressed from
Art Deco to
Streamline Moderne. Deskey first gained attention as a designer with his window displays for the
Franklin Simon Department Store in
Manhattan in 1926. In the 1930s, he won the competition to design
Radio City Music Hall's interiors. He also sold geometrically painted objects through the fashionable shop of
Rena Rosenthal, and did custom design work for her. In the 1940s, he started the graphic design firm
Donald Deskey Associates and made some of the most recognizable icons of the day, including the
Crest toothpaste packaging, the
Tide bullseye, as well as a widely used New York City lamppost model. In 1940, Deskey developed a decorative form of
plywood, which had a unique striated, or combed, look. Produced under the name Weldtex, it became very popular in the 1950s. He died in
Vero Beach, Florida, the town to which he had retired in 1975. In 1923, Deskey married Mary Campbell Douthett, a pianist and later professor of music at
Juniata College. They had two sons, Michael Douthett Deskey, an architect, and Donald Stephen ("Steve" or D. Stephen) Deskey, a building contractor. In 1952, Deskey married Katharine Godfrey Brennan, who survived him. ==References==