Aesthetics wise, something attributed to the following individuals usually makes an impression on me:
Arne Jacobsen
Zaha Hadid
Ross Lovegrove
Marc Newson
Jasper Morrison
Naoto Fukasawa
My design heros - those who designed the products I love and use everyday - are usually nameless . I don’t care much either, knowing that designers quite often claim (or get) far too much credit for anything successful on the market. Kinda like the iPod clickwheel is wrongly attributed to Jony Ives.