Beautiful Legacy

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at the Swiss Army Knife - the small red object designed by Karl Elsener that became one of the clearest symbols of usefulness, reliability and readiness.
Originally created for Swiss soldiers, the knife compressed several practical tools into one pocket-sized object. But its legacy goes far beyond the military. The Swiss Army Knife introduced a mindset of preparedness: you do not carry tools only for what you know will happen - you carry them for what you cannot predict.
From camping trips to desk drawers, from backpacks to childhood memories, it became a design icon because it makes uncertainty feel manageable. It is not about being equipped for everything. It is about being equipped enough.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at I amsterdam - the city identity created in 2004 by Amsterdam Partners with KesselsKramer.
More than a logo, I amsterdam became a sentence, a civic invitation, and eventually a public object. Its famous red and white letters at Museumplein turned city branding into a ritual: something people could touch, climb, photograph, and share.
But its success also became its complication. As Amsterdam faced the pressures of mass tourism and overcrowding, the logo that once represented openness and belonging started to symbolise the city’s transformation into a backdrop.
This is the story of a city brand that became part of urban life - and a reminder that design does not only shape image. It shapes behaviour, movement, attention, and responsibility.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we explore one of the most recognisable symbols in modern sport - the NBA logo.
Designed in 1969 by Alan Siegel and inspired by the silhouette of Jerry West, the logo did far more than identify a basketball league. It helped transform the NBA into a global brand and basketball into a worldwide cultural phenomenon.
From its origins in an era when professional sport was learning to think like media, to its lasting influence on merchandising, fashion, television, and athlete branding, this episode uncovers how a remarkably simple graphic became one of the most enduring identity systems ever created.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at Futura, the geometric typeface designed by Paul Renner in 1927.
 
Built from circles, lines, and disciplined reduction, Futura rejected ornament and historical nostalgia in favour of clarity, order, and modernity. It was not created to decorate the future - it was created to give the future a visual voice.
 
From European modernism to the Apollo 11 Moon landing plaque, Futura became one of the most powerful typographic symbols of progress. But its legacy did not remain in design history. It entered commerce, culture, and everyday life, shaping the visual language of brands like Volkswagen, Nike, and Supreme.
 
Futura’s story reveals the paradox of modern design: a typeface created to feel rational and universal became one of the most recognisable aesthetic signatures of the 20th century.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at the Frankfurt Kitchen, designed in 1926 by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky.
 
Created for a social housing project in Frankfurt, this small, narrow kitchen was not designed as decoration or domestic comfort in the traditional sense. It was designed as a system.
 
Schütte-Lihotzky studied movement, reach, storage, hygiene, workflow and time, applying the logic of industrial efficiency to the everyday act of cooking. The result was one of the first modern fitted kitchens - compact, precise and deeply functional.
 
But its legacy is not simple.
 
The Frankfurt Kitchen made domestic labour visible, measurable and worthy of design attention. At the same time, it also reveals the contradictions of efficiency: who is the system designed for, who performs the labour, and what kind of life does the system reinforce?
 
From fitted cabinets to modular kitchens, from ergonomic planning to user-centred design, the Frankfurt Kitchen shaped far more than domestic architecture. It introduced a way of thinking that still defines how we design homes, services, retail spaces and everyday flows.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at I ❤️ NY, the logo that turned civic identity into emotional shorthand.
 
Created by Milton Glaser in 1977, the mark appeared at a moment when New York was facing financial crisis, crime, and a damaged public image. What could have been a simple tourism campaign became something much deeper: a declaration of affection for a complicated city.
 
This episode explores how Glaser compressed belonging, pride, resilience, and emotion into four simple signs: I, a heart, and NY. It looks at why the logo worked so powerfully - not by explaining New York, but by giving people a way to express their relationship with it.
 
From T-shirts and souvenirs to global imitations and civic solidarity, I ❤️ NY became more than a campaign. It became public language.
 
A story about graphic design, city branding, and how a place can become emotionally recognisable through one unforgettable mark.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at the bra - one of the most intimate and culturally complex design objects of modern life.
 
Originally created by Mary Phelps Jacob as a practical rejection of the corset, the bra introduced softness, flexibility, and movement at a time when women’s bodies were still shaped by rigid social and physical structures. Her improvised invention separated support from control, offering a new relationship between clothing and the body.
 
But its legacy is not simple.
 
As the bra became industrialised, standardised, advertised, and redesigned, it also became part of a new system of expectations. What began as liberation gradually became connected to beauty, modesty, desirability, and the public gaze.
 
This is a story about design’s power to both free and define us.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy we get into the rhythm.Before the Fender Precision Bass, rhythm was heavy, fragile, and difficult to move. Bass players relied on the upright bass - a beautiful but demanding instrument that struggled with volume, portability, and precision in a changing musical world.
 
In 1951, Leo Fender redesigned the bass for the electric age.
 
The Precision Bass was smaller, amplified, fretted, and built for working musicians who needed rhythm to travel. It did not simply make the bass louder. It changed the posture of the player, the structure of the band, and the physical force of modern music.
 
From rock and soul to funk, punk, disco, and pop, the P Bass helped turn the bass line into a defining foundation of popular sound.
 
This episode explores how one instrument transformed rhythm from something carried in the background into something mobile, amplified, and central.
 
A story about music, movement, and the moment rhythm became portable.

What makes an object trustworthy?
 
In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we explore the story behind the Omega Speedmaster - the watch that became one of the most reliable tools ever worn by humans.
 
Originally designed as a racing chronograph, the Speedmaster would eventually be tested by NASA under some of the harshest conditions imaginable: extreme heat, violent vibration, decompression, and the vacuum of space itself.
 
But this is not just a story about space exploration.
 
It is a story about decisions.
 
About why manual winding mattered. Why legibility became critical. Why robustness mattered more than luxury. And about the mindset of people like Claude Baillod, who helped shape a watch designed not for recognition - but for reliability.
 
From the Apollo 11 Moon Landing to the life-saving timing procedures during Apollo 13 mission, the Speedmaster became more than a product.
 
It became a standard for how objects should behave when failure is not an option.
 
This is the legacy of the Omega Speedmaster.
And the moment when time became survival.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we explore how Paul Bocuse transformed the role of the chef - and in doing so, reshaped the supermarket.
 
Before Bocuse, supermarkets sold food as anonymous product. Restaurants, on the other hand, were spaces of authorship and interpretation. Bocuse collapsed that divide.
 
By turning the chef into a visible authority, he allowed culinary thinking to travel beyond the kitchen - into packaging, into prepared food, into retail environments.
 
This marked a fundamental shift. Food was no longer just stocked. It was staged.
 
Counters became theatres. Products carried signatures. Supermarkets began to borrow the language of restaurants - freshness, curation, composition.
 
This is not a story about gastronomy alone. It is about translation - how authority moves from one system into another.
 
Paul Bocuse proved that food, even at scale, can carry intention.
 
And that, ultimately, changed how we choose.