Thomas Kellogg

Thomas "Tom" W. Kellogg was an industrial designer, employed at Raymond Loewy Associates design studio, who has made one single contribution to the Star Trek franchise, albeit a signature one.

Kellogg's claim to Star Trek fame came when Gene Winfield sought out the design studio in order to visualize a redesign he had in mind. The redesign concerned the Class F shuttlecraft design of the , for which original designer Matt Jefferies had designed a much more curvier concept, but which Winfield could not realize in the time allotted to him. As Winfield recalled, "So, I went to him [Jefferies], and I said "Now I can't built that in that short period of time", I think we had only thirty days to build this complete unit. So he said, "OK, you redesign it, and bring back a rendering or sketches of your version of the Galileo and then I'll look at it, and tell you yes or no" So I did that, I totally designed, and I had a company do a rendering, a nice beautiful colored rendering. I took that back to Jefferies, and he said, "Oh yeah, great, beautiful" and said "Go to work", and we built it." (Galileo Restoration Project) It was Kellogg who made the color rendering of the preliminary re-design, proceeding from another Jefferies design, a "Space Dock Utility Craft Personnel Carrier" which had the more boxed configuration Winfield preferred, but also worked in some design elements of the studio's renowned design of the car. His design version did not yet sport the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)-style warp nacelles, which Jefferies later added, but was otherwise largely adhered to. As a subcontractor to a subcontractor, Kellogg's contribution was never formally acknowledged. Kellogg has made no other contributions to the motion picture industry.

Career outside ''Star trek
Having grown up on a farm in Illinois, with early memories of sitting on his father's lap and holding the steering wheel of the family car, he learned to drive in a Studebaker. As happenstance would have it, after he graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1955, he was offered a job at Raymond Loewy Associates, the design studio of its already. Loewy had already been aware of Kellogg's talents while still at college. "At first he thought it was a joke, but then he heard the French accent.", his daughter Kris Machado recalled. Coming full circle, Kellogg earned his renown as being one of the most significant co-designers of the legendary 1962 "Avanti" car. Kellogg spent most of his career working for Loewy in one or another function.

Thomas Kellogg passed away in 2003 as a result from the complications stemming from a car crash. Battling health problems for years, he remained a consummate designer to the last, as his daughter Kris reported that some of his last words were, "This is a nicely designed room.", commenting on his last hospital room. 

External link

 * Thomas Kellogg eulogy at nytimes.com