Designing women: Lella Vignelli

Hayes was open about the experience she faced: “When I came to New York ten years ago I couldn’t find anybody Black in the commercial art field. Finally, after I found a job on my own, I did start to encounter Black people. But in the course of trying to develop my talent I discovered that if I went to them for some direction, they just wouldn't give it.” Hayes was able to overcome the challenges she faced, and was keen on supporting the Black community in their design aspirations, along with co-curating the Black Artist in Graphic Communication exhibition. Serving as a professor at New York Technical College, Dorothy Hayes also established Dorothy's Door, a commercial design agency.

In 1955, Massimo and Lella Vignelli designed the Pitagora theater seating system for Poltrona Frau furniture company. Pitagora armchairs can be installed in straight or curved rows to furnish theatres and auditoriums. In 1985, Lella Vignelli designed a line of tableware for Japanese manufacturer Sasaki. In 1984, Italian silver manufacturer Cleto Munari asked the Vignellis to design a tea set in a post-modern way. Since the Vignellis never liked post-modern design, Lella took this opportunity for expressing her point of view on the subject by using a metaphor. The tea set shows the purity of the basic Euclidean shapes: the cube, pyramid, and sphere, each crashed or perforated by the snake of postmodernism. In 1977, the Vignellis built the interior of St. Peter’s Church in New York. They considered the project a holistic design concept, working on every element, from the pews to the organ.

Dorothy Hayes (1935–2015), a distinguished African American graphic designer and educator, was born in Mobile, Alabama.

A skilled interior and product designer, Lella Vignelli (1934–2016) and her husband Massimo co-founded Vignelli Associates, one of New York’s most sought-after studios.