Steinhilber, Budd

Budd Steinhilber (1924- ) was born in New York City and graduated, with Honors, from Pratt Institute in 1943. His first job was with Raymond Loewy Associates in New York City, but after only a year he left to become one of the first two employees of Dohner & Lippincott (later J. Gordon Lippincott & Co. and then Lippincott & Margulies). In 1947 Budd worked on the team that designed the short-lived Tucker automobile, producing drawings, models, and design prototypes.

Soon after this, Steinhilber joined with a Lippincott colleague, his friend and fellow Pratt graduate Read Viemeister, to form Vie Design Studios, based in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Vie's clients included the Antioch Summer Shakespeare Festival, for whom Steinhilber eventually designed sets for every one of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays, an achievement unmatched by any other designer thus far. (Steinhilber also appeared onstage in several productions.) In 1951 Vie served as consultant to Steinhilber's former employer, Lippincott & Margulies, on designs for the crew and officer's quarters for the USS Nautilus nuclear submarine.

In 1964, Steinhilber and well-known West Coast industrial designer Gene Tepper formed Tepper & Steinhilber Associates based in California. T&S was among the first to work with the then-new Silicon Valley electronics industry, designing console interfaces, optical disk storage units, video cameras, and a number of innovative medical devices.

Ten years later Steinhilber and graphic designer Barry Deutsch formed Steinhilber & Deutsch, Inc. S&D's clients ran the gamut of American businesses, including Atari, Campbell's, Gallo Vineyards, Intel, Nabisco, Pabst, Northface, and Warner Communications. The firm's work won numerous awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, New York Art Director's Club, San Francisco Art Director's Club, and International Design Review, and has been featured in many popular and trade publications including Product Design Annual, Japan Design, Graphics USA, AdWeek, and International Design . In 1984 Steinhilber was named a fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).

In 1987 Steinhilber "retired" and moved to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, where he resides today (2007). His interest in alternative fuel vehicles led him to serve as design advisor to the Konawaena High School's award-winning solarmobile team in the 1990 World Solar Challenge. (The team later went on to the Swiss Tour de Sol, and drove their car across the United States from coast to coast entirely on solar power.). That same year he founded IDSA's Environmental Responsibility Committee, and in 1991 IDSA honored him at its national convention for his efforts to awaken the profession to environmental concerns. He was one of two U.S. delegates invited to participate in a seminar on "The Eco-Design of Products" (Delft, Holland 1991) and appeared on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw to discuss waste reduction through "design for disassembly." In 1998 he founded Personal Electric Transports (PET) to develop concepts and prototypes for battery-powered motorscooters and other small vehicles. He served as delegate to two international climate conferences, the U.N. Conference on Global Climate Change (Kyoto, 1997) and the U.N. Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002), demonstrating some of PET's prototypes at the latter. In February 2007 he was invited to speak on "Designing Sustainable Mobility," along with Jay Baldwin of the Buckminster Fuller Insitute and Dr. Paul Macready, designer of the Gossamer Condor and EV-1.

Steinhilber has been honored many times both for his design work and for his contributios to the field in general. He has received IDSA's Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA) twice (1981 and 1984); he also served on the IDEA jury in 2004. In recognition of his efforts on beh alf of the environment he received a $20,000 "Distinguished Designer Fellowship" grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1991) and his alma mater, Pratt Institute, awarded him an Alumni Achievement Award (1993).

Steinhilber also paints; his watercolors have been shown at the Dayton Art Institute, the Thomas Watson Gallery in New York, and many other California and Hawaii venues.

From the guide to the Budd Steinhilber Papers, 1942-2007, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)