The Vostok blog

The motivation for the first streamline designs was functional improvement: more speed, less resistance and fuel optimisation. Here’s a great video from 1936 where Chrysler explains the concept of streamline to their customers introducing new car models with softer and rounder shapes:

What started as a functional need later became a styling trend. Thousands of objects were designed in aerodynamic shapes even though they were supposed to be still. In this flickr gallery there are a few great examples:

The greatest advocate of streamline as a styling aesthetic were Norman Bel Geddes and Raymond Loewy”>Raymond Loewy who believed that curves were great, especially for making a product more appealing to the public. One of his most famous designs is a pencil sharpener that, although it was supposed to be screwed to a table, its shape was as streamlined as a supersonic rocket:

This quote of the streamline godfather explains everything:

The most beautiful curve is a rising sales graph

Raymond Loewy