‘Make more with less’ was the title of Tom Karen’s talk at Central St Martins last night, a race at high speed through the career of one of the UK’s great product designers.  Karen was in conversation with Stephen Hayward, associate professor, in front of an audience packed into the Cochrane Theatre, seated alongside to a pristine orange Bond Bug, one of his best-loved vehicles from 1970. Also parked casually on the stage was a Raleigh Chopper, and next to Karen a marble run, the toy he designed for Kiddicraft, and which was subsequently copied endlessly.

Karen began by talking about his life in Brno, where his family were well-off and lived in an elegant mansion with 17 servants and a swimming pool at the end of a large garden. In March 1939 all that changed and the family was forced to flee, first to Prague and then, with the start of the Second World War in September that year, to France. In 1942 the family settled in Britain. After the war Karen studied aeronautical design at Loughborough and, after a brief spell working in the industry, joined Central School of Art’s Industrial Design MA. His career as a product and vehicle designer began when Ford came recruiting.

Karen’s most prolific period followed his appointment as director of Ogle Design in 1962. Ogle became the UK’s leading industrial design office and created literally hundreds of products and vehicles for British manufacturers. The range of work was huge too: from radios to knitting machines, toys and vacuum cleaners. Some of Ogle’s breakthroughs were in engineering, for example the development of crash test dummies. Other breakthroughs were in the realm of image, where the emphasis was on style rather than function, for example the Chopper bike for Raleigh which was inspired by the American Schwinn bicycle. The Reliant Scimitar GTE of 1968 – the first sporty estate car – had practical benefits as well as style. According to Karen, ‘it went faster than a Capri with the same engine’.

The talk gave a fascinating glimpse into a career that paralleled the last gasp of British manufacturing. Karen’s ideas shaped a generation and, although now officially retired, he continues to work on concepts and visions for improving the appearance and performance of all manner of everyday things including cars, toys, buses, buildings and even cities.

Archival images of Karen’s work were presented using  a new interface developed by Ben Hughes, course leader of CSM’s MA in Industrial Design. It was a clever device that allowed the talk to flow from idea to idea rather than in strict linear progression.

It’s time more attention was paid to Karen’s career and his role in shaping British design. Perhaps because he is modest about his achievements and prefers to think about ideas for the future rather than dwelling on his past achievements, he has not been been give the credit he deserves. With typical self-deprecating humour, Karen’s final remark last night was to point out that the common thread linking his work is ’sausages’: the round-edged lozenge shapes that occurs in many of his products from the dashboard of his award-winning Leyland truck to the gear shift of the Chopper.

Here are some of the best quotes from last night:

On his approach to product design

“I just wanted to make products that were better than what had gone before”

“We never deliberately designed anything to fall apart after three years. But there’s no point designing a car to last 100 years if the technology is outdated after five years”

“I love form. I worship good form and that gets built into everything”

On the Reliant Scimitar GTE

“It was particularly likable. It’s nice to clean, a practical, nice motorcar”

On the Raleigh Chopper

“It was not a very good bicycle – you wouldn’t finish one stage of the Tour de France on it, but it flew off the racks. It hung together well”

“A good product is when you can’t add or take anything away and it grabs peoples’ imagination”

On car design

“Car design is an art form that more people understand than any other. If you went to a pub and tried to have a discussion about Gehry versus Hadid you wouldn’t get many opinions. But try to discuss the new model Focus against the old one, or the next generation, and you’ll have a lively discussion”

Photos by Charlotte Raynsford