Deconstructing Product Design

Zippo Cigarette Lighter

George Blaisdell, 1932

1. Great design is sometimes born of necessity, sometimes opportunity, and sometimes both — so it is with the Zippo lighter, named after the then-recently invented zipper for no other reason than he liked the way it sounded. Sarah Dorn, daughter of Blaisdell, comments: “The one thing [my father] did know in the early ’30s was that he needed to do something, because those days were tough. There wasn’t a lot of money lying about then, but he went to everybody to get the money to launch Zippo Manufacturing Company. Nobody had any faith in it. It seemed like a foolish, harebrained idea. And it was. Imagine: manufacturing and marketing a lighter for $1.95 when that amount of money fed a family. What ...