Graphic designer Jacqueline Casey (1927–1992) is best known for the posters she created for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Jacqueline Casey. © 2019 MIT Museum.
Strongly influenced by Swiss designers Karl Gerstner and Josef Müller-Brockmann, Casey was the foremost practitioner of the International Style in the US. She often created striking elemental imagery, using letterforms to turn her works into messages. “My job is to stop anyone I can with an arresting or puzzling image, and entice the viewer to read the message in small type and above all to attend the exhibition,” she said.
Six Artists poster, 1970. Design: Jacqueline Casey. © 2019 MIT Museum.
As a child, Casey wanted to become an artist. Her parents, however, did not support this desire. When Casey went to high school, they urged her to enrol in a bookkeeping and administration program. After graduation, Casey struggled to find a design job. For a while, she worked in a department store at the cash register, but later resigned and travelled to Europe. After returning, she felt ready to get back into the arts and focus on design. In 1955, Casey was recruited by Muriel Cooper to work in the Office of Publications at MIT. In 1972, Casey headed the Office of Publications at MIT.
Miscellaneous Motions of Kinetic Sculpture exhibition poster, 1967. Design: Jacqueline Casey. © MIT Committee of the Visual Arts.
Women in Science and Engineering poster, 1964. Design: Jacqueline Casey. © 2019 MIT Museum.
Muriel Cooper (1925–1994) was an American designer, educator and researcher who charted new territory for design in the changing landscape of electronic communication.
Muriel Cooper. Photo by Marie Cosindas.
Cooper worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for most of her life—first as a freelancer in the publishing office and then co-founding the prominent MIT Media Lab. Cooper designed some of the most influential design publications in America, including Learning from Las Vegas, one of the key texts of postmodernist art critique.
MIT Press logo designed by Muriel Cooper, 1965.
In 1952, Muriel became the director of the MIT Office of Publications (now Design Services). She left in 1958 to travel on a Fulbright Scholarship in Milan, Italy. On her return to Boston, she opened her own studio, Muriel Cooper/Media Designer, and soon, MIT became her biggest client—especially after she designed the MIT Press logo. “I guess I'm never sure that print is truly linear,” Muriel Cooper said. “It's more a simultaneous medium. Designers know a lot about how to control perception, how to present information in some way that helps you find what you need, or what it is they think you need. Information is only useful when it can be understood.” Messages and Means was the first class Cooper taught at MIT, focused on design and communication for print. Her teaching integrated reproduction tools as part of the thinking process in a bid to reduce the gap between process and product.
The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago survey designed by Muriel Cooper, 1969.
Messages and Means course poster, 1974. Design: Muriel Cooper and on MacNeil.