In Visible Language journal, 2010 The King has been dismissed. Long live the Commoner or long live the next king and the next common fad. Most likely, anything useful about “Helvetica,” the film, has been said already. The individual designers who were interviewed during the documentary process framed some of the reasons for its success, […]
In Words
What’s in a Title?
Anecdote 1 My father was a well established psychiatrist and general medical practitioner. Living in very small towns, on asylum campuses, people would inquire about his profession. His frequent answer was: “I am a psychopath” to which most often he received very enthusiastic responses, with a nod, a slap on the shoulder and a cheerful […]
James F. Pfeufer, My Sponsor
James F. Pfeufer, 88, died at home on February 6, 2001. He was the husband of Rika Henderson and the late Reed Champion Pfeufer. Mr. Pfeufer was born in Comfort, TX in 1912. His grandparents were members of the German Freethinker movement who settled the area around 1848. He was raised in Harlem, NY, where […]
MIT: Casey, Coburn, Cooper, Matill
Not Veni, Vedi, Vici? Rather . . . in truth and honesty: I came, I saw, I did not conquer . . . I just appropriated . . . and now . . . it’s all mine! If one would tell American designers that few among them are true originators, many of them would […]
Simmons Valz Project
It had never occurred to me that teaching is in my DNA, until recently, now that I am retired, and have the time to think. I understand there were other distant relatives of mine involved in education, but my grandfather (1865-1963) was a headmaster; his brother a music professor at a Berlin conservatory. My father […]
Nicholas Negroponte
. . . avanti, avanti, avanti, you avant garde architect . . . have gall, guts, audacity, cheek, . . . jaunt gallantly onward . . . just don’t gallivant from gala to gala . . . don’t lose, but guard your integrity . . . because in your exuberance wanting to be the center […]
My WGBH Experience
In the early seventies (1970), Hartford Gunn resigned as general manager of WGBH to assume the presidency of the newly formed Public Broadcasting Service in Washington. Stan Calderwood, former chairman of the board, Polaroid Corporation, having just been appointed President of the WGBH Educational Foundation, invited me to make an elaborate design presentation of concepts […]
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts MIT’s publishing operations were first formally instituted by the creation of an imprint called “Technology Press” in 1932. This imprint was founded by James R. Killian, Jr., at the time editor of MIT’s Technology Review alumni magazine. He […]
MIT Office of Publications Legacy
The authorship of many documents designed by the staff of the MIT Office of Publication have never been verified or corrected. So one will find resumes by Muriel, Jackie and Ralph that are erroneous. The reason for this is that they were copied over and over again by many publications who never checked in with […]
More Thoughts on MIT
I would question the scholarship. This must have been concocted by a “design historian”, but not by a researcher or scholar trained in the discipline of art history. From my vantage point, theres is no way in which Muriel Cooper would have been in the position of appointing/hiring Jackie Casey. I agree, that Muriel was […]