Photo borrowed from Ben Quinton/The Guardian and this Guardian article. Hope that's ok.
Ten years ago, on this blog, we were obsessed with the question of who designed the face on Henry the Hoover. We ran a deep investigative series of blogposts. Who designed the face on Henry the Hoover? (Jan 2011) and Henry the Hoover face designer update (Jan 2011).
We reached no firm conclusions but a few reckons.
"The name and the face were both Duncan's ideas, put there (in his charming account) because the lonely cleaning armies of the early morning and late night liked to use an object they could address as a friend."
Duncan being Chris Duncan founder and sole owner of Numatic which makes Henrys.
We were basically correct, and we can now reveal the full story via this wonderful article in the Guardian Sucks to be him! How Henry the vacuum cleaner became an accidental design icon.
Here's the full story.
By the mid-70s, after Numatic had found some success, Duncan was on a British stand at a Lisbon trade show. “It was as boring as sin,” he recalls. One evening, Duncan and one of his salesmen idly began to dress up their latest vacuum cleaner, first with a bit of ribbon, then with a union flag badge on what started to look a bit like a hat. They found some chalk and drew a crude smile under the hose outlet, which suddenly looked like a nose, then some eyes. Searching for a nickname that felt suitably British, they settled on Henry. “We put it over in the corner with all the other equipment and the next day people were laughing and pointing,” Duncan says. Back at Numatic, which then had a few dozen employees, Duncan asked his advertising guy to design a proper face for the cleaner. “Henry” remained an in-house nickname; the product still had Numatic printed above its eyes.
We salute you advertising guy! Great article, well worth a read.
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