Arnold Wolf

The Monterey County Herald Arnold Wolf, fomer head of JBL audio, dies Renowned industrial designer Arnold Wolf, 85, a former president and CEO of the JBL audio company, died Tuesday at his home in Pacific Grove. Among his accomplishments was design of the iconic Paragon loudspeaker system for JBL in 1957. It was featured at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as part of the 2011-12 exhibition "California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way." The Paragon, 9 feet wide, remains one of the most collectible audio components. Later, during Mr. Wolf's presidency of JBL, the company produced the L100 loudspeaker, which was to become the world's best-selling speaker. Helping to make it a great commercial success was the groundbreaking grill design. Breaking from traditional speaker cloth, he helped design a striking foam cover in a sculptural grid pattern that proved to be especially popular in orange. He retired to Pacific Grove in 1987 and recently became a regular contributor to The Herald's Opinion page. "Though his views were not universally popular, they were extremely well-argued and extremely well-written," said Herald Editor Royal Calkins. "Arnold was exceedingly talented in so many fields, truly brilliant." He was born in San Francisco on April 30, 1927. In the early 1930s, his family moved to the East Coast, eventually settling in New York City, where he attended the Bentley School in Manhattan and the Bronx High School of Science, graduating in 1943. In 1942-43, he performed as a radio actor in a number of network programs. When the family moved to Los Angeles, he went to work as a draftsman and perspective sketch artist at the RKO film studio. He left to enroll at Los Angeles City College, completing three semesters before being called for military service. After basic training in the Air Force, he was assigned to the Air Force Band in Washington, D.C., as the writer and assistant producer of the band's weekly national radio program. Taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, he enrolled at UC Berkeley. His studies centered on dramatic art, with a minor in historical decorative arts. He took part in numerous student theater productions. After graduation, he became director of the adult education theater program in the Berkeley school system and an instructor in theater arts at Saint Mary's College (1952-53) and at UC Berkeley (1953). Mr. Wolf then changed course and began a career in the field of industrial design, founding his own firm, Arnold Wolf Associates, in Berkeley, which spanned the years 1957-70. During that time, his most prominent client was James B. Lansing Sound in Los Angeles, for whom he designed a wide array of loudspeaker and electronic products. In 1969, JBL went through a change in ownership and the new parent company was faced with the problem of finding a chief executive for the reorganized business. The choice eventually settled on Mr. Wolf, who accepted the position of president in 1969. That required him to transfer his industrial design practice to an associate and to move his family to Hollywood. He remained with JBL until 1980. In 1981-82, he served as a member of the Fellowship Awards panel (Design Arts Division) at the National Endowment for the Arts. During the 1984-85 academic year he took the post of professor and chairman of the Design Department at CSU Long Beach. He maintained his design practice until 1987. He was a founding member and fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America. His designs received numerous awards and have been shown in a variety of exhibitions, including the Atomfair International Exhibition in Brussels (1958), the Third Biennial of Industrial Design, Ljubljana (1968), California Design Exhibitions 9, 10 and 11 at the Pasadena Art Museum (1965-71), and the 14th annual Design Review at The Brooklyn Museum. His passion, humor, talent and love of design will be greatly missed by all who had the privilege of knowing him. He is survived by his daughter, Vivian Wolf of Tustin, and sons Michael Wolf of Irvine and Gordon Wolf of Los Angeles. Arnold Wolf has to be credited with some of the most significant and varied contributions to the ultimate success of JBL. Wolf was President of JBL from 1969 to 1979. He will be the first to tell you that JBL's success during his tenure was not the accomplishment of any one person. Dr. Sidney Harman, as head of JBL's new parent company Jervis Corporation, provided the vision and strategic direction that placed JBL on the path to market supremacy. As President, Wolf was ably assisted by Irving Stern (Vice President, Marketing), Sterling Sander (Vice President, Operations), Albert Schwartz (Vice President, Manufacturing) and many other talented people. While Wolf assumed the presidency of a company that had a reputation for state-of-the-art products, it was still focused on niche markets. On the consumer side, JBL was primarily known for its high end speaker systems and components. It had yet to establish a major presence in the mass markets. In the professional arena, their movie industry and studio products were well regarded, but the dominant company remained JBL's arch rival, Altec Lansing. All of this was to change by the end of Wolf's tenure at JBL. As an example, by 1977, Billboard Magazine published a survey of the studio market that showed more studios employing JBL monitors than all other brands combined. The consumer L100 had been introduced and rose to become the most successful loudspeaker ever developed to that time. JBL became THE name in sound reinforcement, supplying equipment to such high profile events as the original Woodstock and Watkins Glen rock festivals. Presiding over such a remarkable transition is accomplishment enough, but it doesn't begin to document the contributions of Arnold Wolf. Nor does it capture the multifaceted and multitalented nature of this man. How else do you describe a man who began as a juvenile radio actor, was formally trained in theatre arts, made an initial career as a drama director, transitioned to a career in industrial design, played a key role in the design of the JBL Paragon, designed JBL's corporate logo, and then went on to become President of the company. From Core 77 Design Magazine, 1 May 2013 Arnold Wolf, Industrial Designer and Former CEO of JBL, Passes Away Last week Arnold Wolf, the former head of audio company JBL, passed away. Wolf was one of the few industrial design pioneers that not only formed his own studio back in the '50s, but who would also, unusually, be later asked to take over a client's company as CEO. Wolf's career path was atypical from the start. "There is inherent irony in my having been elected to [the Academy of Fellows]," he told the IDSA upon winning that honor in 1983, "or, indeed, to my being a member of IDSA in the first place. The reason is that I have never studied industrial design formally, and so can be regarded as a largely undetected impostor." After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science in the early 1940s, Wolf worked as a radio actor specializing in European dialects. (He presumably had a good ear, which wouldn't hurt for his later work with JBL.) By the mid-'40s Wolf was putting his natural drawing skills to use doing "commercial art" for a Hollywood studio, and later got into advertising and theater art. By the mid-1950s he formed his own studio in the relatively young field of industrial design. That same year, 1957, Wolf landed a rather important client: James B. Lansing Sound, Incorporated. JBL was developing a crazy, and huge, new type of speaker built around audio principles developed by sound engineer Richard Ranger. Wolf was called on to design the nine-foot beast, which was centered around a large, curved piece of wood that the mid-range drivers fired towards; the resultant audio reflection "[created] a wide, spacious stereo image." The Paragon, as it was called, was a success. It had an almost absurdly long production life, remaining part of JBL's offerings until 1983, and today remains a sought-after collectible among audiophiles who can restore them. Wolf continued working with JBL, even designing their logo, and in 1969 was asked to be the CEO. He accepted, handing his ID practice over to a colleague. In 1970, CEO-designer Wolf made his mark on the audio field once again, by adapting JBL's pro-grade studio monitors into a consumer version known as the L100. The design challenge there was largely visual: "The problem with bookshelf designs is that, in most home settings, the only effective visual element is the front grille," Wolf told Audio Heritage years later. "A panel of stretched cloth, however attractive by itself, does not communicate anything distinctive between one loudspeaker or another." What [Wolf] wanted to find was some way to impart dimensionality to the plane surface of the [L100] grille. This would not only add visual interest and a unique identity, but it would suggest, on some level, the three-dimensional solidity of the stereo sound image. Wolf had seen the use of foam plastic as coverings for microphones?either as breath filters in the studio or as wind shields in outdoor applications. He reasoned that, if the plastic was sufficiently open to sound transmission at the very low sound pressure levels encountered in microphone use, it surely would be transparent enough for a loudspeaker grille. Investigation proved this to be the case. Reticulated or open-pore foam tested out as better than most conventional grille fabrics. Wolf has stated that, while he cannot be absolutely sure of this, it appears that the L100 was the first use of shaped foam as a loudspeaker grille material. Methods for contouring and shaping foam were fairly sophisticated, even at that time, and a striking deep waffle-like pattern was quickly devised that lent itself to the available production methods. The L100 went on to become the bestselling speaker of the decade. Amazingly, the studio version of this speaker is still manufactured today in Japan, though absent Wolf's 3D foam grill. Remembering Arnold Wolf, FIDSA 1927-2013 Renowned industrial designer Arnold Wolf, 85, a former president and CEO of the JBL audio company, passed away Tuesday at his home in Pacific Grove. Arnold Wolf can be credited with some of the most significant and varied contributions to the ultimate success of JBL. Among his accomplishments was design of the iconic Paragon loudspeaker system for JBL in 1957. It was featured at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as part of the 2011-12 exhibition "California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way." The nine-foot wide Paragon remains one of the most collectible audio components. Arnold assumed the presidency of JBL in 1970 when it had a reputation for state-of-the-art products, but was still focused on niche markets. That all changed by the end of his tenure. During his presidency JBL produced the L100 loudspeaker, which was to become the world's best-selling speaker. Helping to make it a great commercial success was the groundbreaking grill design. Breaking from traditional speaker cloth, he helped design a striking foam cover in a sculptural grid pattern. By 1977, a survey of the studio market published by Billboard Magazine showed more studios employing JBL monitors than all other brands combined. Presiding over such a remarkable transition is accomplishment enough, but it doesn't begin to document the contributions of Arnold Wolf. Nor does it capture the multifaceted and multitalented nature of this man that IDSA is honored to call one of its own. A member of the Industrial Designers Institute (IDI) when it merged with American Society of Industrial Design (ASID) and the Industrial Design Education Association (IDEA) to become the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) in 1965, Arnold was a proud founding member and Fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America. His designs received numerous awards and have been shown in a variety of exhibitions, including the Atomfair International Exhibition in Brussels (1958), the Third Biennial of Industrial Design, Ljubljana (1968), California Design Exhibitions 9, 10 and 11 at the Pasadena Art Museum (1965-71), and the 14th annual Design Review at The Brooklyn Museum. At the time of his induction as an IDSA Fellow in 1983, Arnold jokingly noted, ?There is inherent irony in my having been elected to Fellowship or, indeed, to my being a member of IDSA in the first place. The reason is that I have never studied industrial design formally, and so can be regarded as a largely undetected impostor. My educational record tends to bear this out.? Born in San Francisco on April 30, 1927, his family eventually settling in New York City, where he graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1943, having been exposed to a valuable extension program at the Museum of Modern Art, which explored the sources and principles underlying 19th and 20th century art and design. Arnold spent three semesters at Los Angeles City College where received his introduction to graphic design. After military service, he attendance at the University of California, graduating with a degree in Dramatic Art, and a minor in historical Decorative Art. Arnold's career and unique path to industrial design is perhaps best summed up in his own words: "My working life was similarly checkered. While still in high school, I freelanced as a juvenile radio actor, specializing in European dialects. The subsequent career path zigzags in a manner shrewdly designed to confuse the reader: draftsman and perspective sketch artist, RKO Pictures (1943-1944); assistant art director, Joe Perrett Advertising (1944); broadcast producer and writer, U.S. Air Force Band, Washington D.C.(1945-1946); instructor in theater arts, Saint Mary's College (1952-1953)and the University of California (1955); owner of Arnold Wolf Associates, industrial designers (1957-1970) in Berkeley, CA; president, James B. Lansing Sound, Inc., Los Angeles, CA (1970-1975), and chairman of the board (1975-1979); professor of design and chairman, Department of Design, California State University, Long Beach (1984-1985)." A Memorial Service will be held on August 24, 2013 at 2 pm located in the Forest Grove Condo Complex, 1020 Brentwood Court, Pacific Grove, CA. 93950.