Kiss The Past Hello: 100 Years Of The Coca-Cola Bottle By Stephen Bayley

Kiss The Past Hello: 100 Years Of The Coca-Cola Bottle By Stephen Bayley

One of the most famous and unmistakable shapes in the world since its introduction in 1915, the Coca-Cola bottle is an influential symbol of design, art, and culture. Identified by its iconic contour fluted lines and described by noted industrial designer, Raymond Loewy as the "perfect liquid wrapper," the bottle has been celebrated and revered in such mediums as art, music, and advertising. From representations as a symbol of mass culture expressed by greats like Andy Warhol and Clive Barker to serving as a reference point for industry influencers such as Volkswagen who compared the shape of the Beetle to the bottle, the Coca-Cola bottle has been a benchmark for the past hundred years. What began as a design brief: to create a bottle that could be identified in the dark or lying broken on the ground, today is one of the most recognized packages on the planet. Published on the occasion of the bottle s centennial, Kiss the Past Hello is a vibrant collection of images and art celebrating the Coca-Cola bottle not only as an icon of design but as a symbol of optimism, happiness, and the shared moments in our lives.

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About the Author

Stephen Bayley is an author, critic, columnist, consultant, broadcaster, debater, and curator, Stephen Bayley was once described as the “second most intelligent man in Britain”, this is both debatable and possibly untrue, but he was certainly the person for whom the term “design guru” was coined, a title he accepted with what he likes to think of as self-deprecating irony. He was educated formally in the Universities of Manchester and Liverpool, informally on the autoroutes, autostrada, cafes, bars, and museums of Europe. He taught at the University of Kent before being plucked from the tedium of provincial academe to create The Boilerhouse Project in the V&A, an exhibition space devoted to design which became London’s most successful gallery of the eighties. Then, with Sir Terence Conran, he created London’s influential Design Museum. He was briefly and hilariously Creative Director of The Millennium Dome before a spectacular falling-out with Peter Mandelson which he wrote about in his book, Labour Camp (1998). Over the past forty years, his writing has changed the popular perception of “design”.

His books include In Good Shape (1979), The Albert Memorial (1981), Harley Earl and The Dream Machine (1983), Sex Drink and Fast Cars (1986), Commerce and Culture (1989), Taste (1991), Sex – a cultural history (2000), A Dictionary of Idiocy (2003), Life’s a Pitch (2007), Design: intelligence made visible (2007), Cars (2008), Woman as Design (2009), La Dolce Vita (2011), Ugly – the Aesthetics of Everything (2012) and Death Drive (2016).  He is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres, an Honorary Fellow of The RIBA, a Trustee of The Royal Fine Arts Commission Trust, and a Fellow of The University of Wales.