What do you think?
Rate this book
The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945–1976
In February 1956 the president of IBM, Thomas Watson Jr., hired the industrial designer and architect Eliot F. Noyes, charging him with reinventing IBM’s corporate image, from stationery and curtains to products such as typewriters and computers and to laboratory and administration buildings. What followed—a story told in full for the first time in John Harwood’s The Interface—remade IBM in a way that would also transform the relationships between design, computer science, and corporate culture.
IBM’s program assembled a cast of leading figures in American design: Noyes, Charles Eames, Paul Rand, George Nelson, and Edgar Kaufmann Jr. The Interface offers a detailed account of the key role these designers played in shaping both the computer and the multinational corporation. Harwood describes a surprising inverse effect: the influence of computer and corporation on the theory and practice of design. Here we see how, in the period stretching from the “invention” of the computer during World War II to the appearance of the personal computer in the mid-1970s, disciplines once well outside the realm of architectural design—information and management theory, cybernetics, ergonomics, computer science—became integral aspects of design.
As the first critical history of the industrial design of the computer, of Eliot Noyes’s career, and of some of the most important work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, The Interface supplies a crucial chapter in the story of architecture and design in postwar America—and an invaluable perspective on the computer and corporate cultures of today.
"
IBM’s program assembled a cast of leading figures in American design: Noyes, Charles Eames, Paul Rand, George Nelson, and Edgar Kaufmann Jr. The Interface offers a detailed account of the key role these designers played in shaping both the computer and the multinational corporation. Harwood describes a surprising inverse effect: the influence of computer and corporation on the theory and practice of design. Here we see how, in the period stretching from the “invention” of the computer during World War II to the appearance of the personal computer in the mid-1970s, disciplines once well outside the realm of architectural design—information and management theory, cybernetics, ergonomics, computer science—became integral aspects of design.
As the first critical history of the industrial design of the computer, of Eliot Noyes’s career, and of some of the most important work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, The Interface supplies a crucial chapter in the story of architecture and design in postwar America—and an invaluable perspective on the computer and corporate cultures of today.
"
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
6 people are currently reading
143 people want to read
About the author
John Harwood
6 booksJohn Harwood is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 18, 2024
rounding up from 3.5! very good, longer review below for capstone but tl;dr: interesting read about the emergence of industrial design as a field, and of attempts to incorporate metaphors of computing, information theory, and cybernetics into IBM's corporate identity. many modernist heavyweights (Paul Rand, Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, several others) involved in IBM's design history, and very interesting to see how design guidelines and language also are used to shape organizational culture. particularly interesting here were more spatial views of computing, like the "furnace approach to the design of the computer," in hopes of hiding visual complexity from an end-user and creating computer forms that best embody the 'nature' of the computer rather than its actual physical form.
The Interface focuses on IBM, particularly Eliot Noyes’ transformation of the company’s design practice, which, at its height, involved many modernist heavyweights—Charles and Ray Eames, Paul Rand, George Nelson, Edgar Kauffman Jr., Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen, and many others. This took place at the same time as IBM horizontalized, departing from a pyramidal structure around cult-of-personality Thomas J. Watson Sr., and toward a more decentralized approach; good design could give consistent logic and language to the company.
Noyes and others believed that “good design is good business,” and that design could articulate a corporate character. IBM did not simply sell computers; rather, it was “in the business of controlling, organizing, and redistributing information and space;” in Noyes’ words, “if you get to the very heart of the matter, what IBM really does is to help man extend his control over his environment. . . . I think that’s the meaning of the company.”
IBM’s changing character, too, took place with the emergence of the multinational corporation; departing from traditional, single-function business to diversified enterprises with many functions, and a strong hierarchy. Harwood claims that that most histories of corporations “de-emphasize the role of mathematical and organizational theory in the reformation of the corporation,” a point which he takes up for the rest of the book. For Harwood, IBM’s design program was a work of corporate ‘theory and practice’ itself, and shed light on corporate forms: “By articulating not just how IBM’s products would look, but how they would be deployed in space, how they would be designed through coordinated teamwork by literally tens or hundreds of architects, designers, and engineers using both drawing boards and advanced tele technological equipment, and how end users would interact with this equipment, the design program at IBM elaborated theoretical positions and set standards of practice that quite literally changed the technics of corporate and architectural culture alike.”
Harwood’s interest, then, is on how management is articulated through these processes, specifically through logistics and spatial organization. These sorts of processes attempt to translate from object to number—these are “the interface,” where humans interact with a complex mechanical apparatus. Some of this takes the form of traditional formal analysis, particularly of architecture and how it organizes institutions. However, Harwood extends this elsewhere, examining the IBM Design Program, along with exhibitions and spectacles made by the company for corporate image purposes. These are all of note because of IBM’s dominance of the computer market from the 1950s-1970s; many design artifacts or communications among IBM’s design consultants yield insights into early models of the computer, or efforts to shape public perceptions and imaginations about the computer.
Chapter 1 is a brief synthesis of the history of industrial design, particularly as it relates to architecture. There’s some brief biography of Robert Noyes, particularly his interest in European avant-garde architecture (particularly of Le Corbusier), and the transformation of Harvard GSD under Walter Gropius to a more modern, functionalist curriculum. As an aside: Harwood mentions Peter Behrens’ AEG Turbine Factory as an example of early corporate identity work, which I remember being heavily covered as a touchstone in my freshman year Modern Architecture course; turns out, I learned at the end of the book, that Harwood also went to Brown, and that same professor (Dietrich Neumann) was his undergrad advisor! Pretty cool.
Harwood gives us a brief tour of American functionalist aesthetics: “American theory on industrial design eliminated the need for an artistic interpretation of the form of both the machine and its products almost entirely.” He similarly traces—at a high level—the shift from people like Raymond Lowey, Walter Dorwin Teague, Henry Dreyfuss, and Norman Bel Geddes being considered “artists in industry” to being termed “industrial designers.”
Noyes was the first MoMA curator on industrial design, and emphasized more of these aesthetics—a “rational elegance” and the elimination of ornamentation, where objects should integrate themselves into a productive whole in their users’ homes. Comfort would not be an indulgence—contra Noyes’ Puritan roots—but, rather, would fulfill functional criteria for use. In doing so, designers would efface “the boundary between human being and machine, as both subject and object comfortably inhabit and identify themselves with one another.” Design, in this form, would be a sort of “anaesthetic,” and, by predetermining success criteria, designers could solve problems through pure “brute force” experimentation, trying often hundreds of possibilities and winnowing them down based on success.
Noyes would go on to the Office of Strategic Services in DC, where he’d meet Thomas J. Watson Jr. and become his lifelong friend. Noyes would leave OSS to work in Norman Bel Geddes’ practice; Bel Geddes, perhaps not coincidentally, would be awarded a commission from IBM. Noyes worked on this, and eventually took a new contract from IBM for an electric typewriter with him, starting his own practice.
Near this time, control of IBM shifted from Thomas J. Watson Sr. to his son Thomas J. Watson Jr. He’d go on to invest heavily in computers, but also hoped to unify IBM’s appearance. “ The scattershot appearance of IBM’s printed material, [designer Paul] Rand made plain, rendered it impossible for the “average buyer” to identify IBM as a coherent and concrete entity.” Design language was particularly important for a company like IBM with such complex products; when consumers could not easily understand IBM’s merchandise, they would need to rely on IBM’s good name.
Watson Jr. would eventually bring on Noyes as a “consultant director of design.” It was important that he remain outside of the corporation; he could link its processes through design and maintain a private practice beyond it. Further, Noyes stipulated that he would only take the job with full access to top management, in hopes that design could pervade the whole organization; he told Watson he wanted to work “with rather than for” him.
Chapter 2 takes up this new IBM design program. Some of the earliest experimentations here were Paul Rand’s early logo for the company, which remains in use today. While Rand claims no representation intent, Harwood makes an interesting case for its influence by information theory; The IBM logo’s horizontal lines are set apart at regular vertical intervals like the alternating crests and valleys of a communications signal; the discrete quality of the lines even within a single register evokes the dashes and spaces of telegraphy (save for the dots). As Rand later complained, the design was almost too successful in its literal evo- cation of the aesthetics of communication: ‘Every logo that some designers do has stripes . . . stripes have become symbolic of the latest in technology.’” The logo, too, could be seen as paralleling boolean logic and redundancy in its stripes.
Harwood then ventures into a more thorough history of the computer, particularly in architectural terms. He notes that some of the terms and metaphors used to describe the computer generate ideological misconceptions, for example, the shift of the term “computer” from person to machine. Harwood also puts forth a particularly compelling critique of the Turing Test: “Thus, one may see (1) that the entire question of ‘machine intelligence’ is thus one of the mediation between the human being and the machine in question by language rendered on a printer or display; (2) that the placement of each subject concealed at a distance from the others is essential to the experiment; and (3) leading to my second objection to Turing’s thesis, that the material apparatus of the test is, on either side of the screen, not computer or human being, but computer and human being—in short, a man–machine system, coordinated by an interface.”
Thomas J. Watson Sr. framed the computer in particularly grand terms, mirroring his cult-of-personality approach to leadership; “This machine will assist the scientist in institutions of learning, in government, and in industry to explore the consequences of man’s thought to the outermost reaches of time, space, and physical conditions.” The senior Watson, interestingly, almost divested from computing research, due to its cost; Watson Jr. doubled down on their commitment and pushed IBM to the front of the pack for several years.
Initial computer designs by Noyes and others hoped to dramatize workings of the new machine, showing inner mechanics. Noyes seemed to want to “bring complex parts into a whole” and described it in terms like a house. For example, talking about an early IBM computer (RAMAC), Noyes wrote that it “should not be like a ranch house. They should be like a Mies house. They should have that much integrity and joy.”
Harwood also quotes Edgar Kaufmann Jr.’s design guidelines for IBM in full, which yield interesting insight into other views of the computer. “The relationship between computer, cabinet, and operator required the deployment not of a trope of transparency, but rather a strategic analogy…Simply put, Kaufmann here reset the terms of the design problem not as a matter of what the computer is, but of what the computer is like.” In essence, Kaufmman hoped to express logical processes of the computer, even if this created some structural dishonesty.
This is paralleled in what several designers called the “furnace approach to the design of the computer,” efforts to divide and concentrate logical elements. In essence, designers should abstract away as much complexity as possible, moving elements ofr processing (“the cellar”) away from elements of use and input/output that human users would touch (“the parlor”).
Harwood devotes lots of time to this sort of spatial view of computing. Early computer design was heavily influenced by Henry Dreyfuss’ “The Measure of Man,” which reimagined the body as a surface that could be laid in contact with the interface between body and machine. Similarly, the computer could be seen as a sort of spatial expansion; its design, particularly in advertising, “gave an impression of a keyhole view into an impossibly vast space. This grid, the image implies, could extend to surround the entire globe, enclosing its surfaces within the counterenvironmental space of the interface.”
Chapter 3 offers some treatment of IBM building architecture; much of this heavily references Rehinold Martin’s work, and I think Martin handles it more compellingly. Spatial metaphors remain interesting. For example, Watson compares IBM to the railroad, in that the company “increased the tempo of business activities…The foundation on which our business is built is the saving of time for all people and all industries throughout the world, to give more time in which to do given tasks, and to make available more time for still further advancement and progress.” The company seemed to always think of itself in these sorts of board terms; at the 1939 World’s Fair, its slogan was “World Peace Through World Trade,” and IBM heavily emphasized its own international presence.
IBM City, an exhibition at the world’s fair, emphasized the set of ‘new ground rules’ resulting from teletechnology, particularly the collapse of space given telecommunications. IBM could be seen as reorganizing information and space into more productive representational structures, or “extending man’s control over environment;’ as the core of its mission, this could expand to global scale. Harwood puts this simply; “The message was clear: IBM would ad- minister the bureaucratic functions of the reexpanding supranational economies of the West with an invisible hand.”
Chapter 4 treats IBM’s ‘spectacles’ and exhibits, used to shape public opinion about the computer. The company was engaged in “a constant struggle to establish control over the public image of the computer” particularly because of public backlash about its use and antitrust enforcement. Some of these were about techno-optimism, including presentations that described the history of science and its pioneers—Newton, Kepler, others—with the computer at its logical end. These presentations “placed the human being at the edge of a new frontier, in which the stable epistemological structures of the Newtonian era would be again dismantled and in need of reconstruction…Watson was no intellectual, but he did have what one might call an intuitive understanding that placing IBM at the vanguard of scientific prog- ress was a good sales pitch”
There’s interesting further articulation of how IBM saw the computer here, particularly in terms of organization; “For Eames and IBM, everything was always already a system, with a need for order, an order that could only be provided through the science of modeling or simulation…the construction of an inter- face that would prompt a certain form of thought conducive to solving a systems-based problem.” Many further exhibitions, like one called ‘Mathematica” hoped to show mathematical views of daily life. The company also sought to shape how individuals viewed their relation with the computer, to mediate IBM’s being “blamed” for various deficiencies or user error.
Harwood’s conclusion is brief, gesturing at other design programs that followed suit.
I enjoyed this book a lot, particularly the first two chapters. Much of it builds on Martin’s work, particularly with respect to themes of organization in early conceptions of the computer, and design / architectural artifacts made by and for companies focused on computing. I found some of the most insightful bits here to be analysis and commentary about internal communications between designers about how to depict the computer, and about how ‘industrial design’ functions; essentially, how corporate identity is produced, and, more interestingly, how to build compelling corporate identity that incorporates and communicates metaphors of computing. I similarly found some of the design considerations—particularly the “furnace model of computing” and ways of depicting the computer’s nature rather than its direct form. There’s brief gesturing at some of the impact of information theory and cybernetics on organizational design that, at times, I wish was taken up more thoroughly, but remains interesting. Very interesting read, makes me want to pick up more about the Eames video works (particularly “A Communications Primer” and “Information Machine”)
The Interface focuses on IBM, particularly Eliot Noyes’ transformation of the company’s design practice, which, at its height, involved many modernist heavyweights—Charles and Ray Eames, Paul Rand, George Nelson, Edgar Kauffman Jr., Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe, Paul Rudolph, Eero Saarinen, and many others. This took place at the same time as IBM horizontalized, departing from a pyramidal structure around cult-of-personality Thomas J. Watson Sr., and toward a more decentralized approach; good design could give consistent logic and language to the company.
Noyes and others believed that “good design is good business,” and that design could articulate a corporate character. IBM did not simply sell computers; rather, it was “in the business of controlling, organizing, and redistributing information and space;” in Noyes’ words, “if you get to the very heart of the matter, what IBM really does is to help man extend his control over his environment. . . . I think that’s the meaning of the company.”
IBM’s changing character, too, took place with the emergence of the multinational corporation; departing from traditional, single-function business to diversified enterprises with many functions, and a strong hierarchy. Harwood claims that that most histories of corporations “de-emphasize the role of mathematical and organizational theory in the reformation of the corporation,” a point which he takes up for the rest of the book. For Harwood, IBM’s design program was a work of corporate ‘theory and practice’ itself, and shed light on corporate forms: “By articulating not just how IBM’s products would look, but how they would be deployed in space, how they would be designed through coordinated teamwork by literally tens or hundreds of architects, designers, and engineers using both drawing boards and advanced tele technological equipment, and how end users would interact with this equipment, the design program at IBM elaborated theoretical positions and set standards of practice that quite literally changed the technics of corporate and architectural culture alike.”
Harwood’s interest, then, is on how management is articulated through these processes, specifically through logistics and spatial organization. These sorts of processes attempt to translate from object to number—these are “the interface,” where humans interact with a complex mechanical apparatus. Some of this takes the form of traditional formal analysis, particularly of architecture and how it organizes institutions. However, Harwood extends this elsewhere, examining the IBM Design Program, along with exhibitions and spectacles made by the company for corporate image purposes. These are all of note because of IBM’s dominance of the computer market from the 1950s-1970s; many design artifacts or communications among IBM’s design consultants yield insights into early models of the computer, or efforts to shape public perceptions and imaginations about the computer.
Chapter 1 is a brief synthesis of the history of industrial design, particularly as it relates to architecture. There’s some brief biography of Robert Noyes, particularly his interest in European avant-garde architecture (particularly of Le Corbusier), and the transformation of Harvard GSD under Walter Gropius to a more modern, functionalist curriculum. As an aside: Harwood mentions Peter Behrens’ AEG Turbine Factory as an example of early corporate identity work, which I remember being heavily covered as a touchstone in my freshman year Modern Architecture course; turns out, I learned at the end of the book, that Harwood also went to Brown, and that same professor (Dietrich Neumann) was his undergrad advisor! Pretty cool.
Harwood gives us a brief tour of American functionalist aesthetics: “American theory on industrial design eliminated the need for an artistic interpretation of the form of both the machine and its products almost entirely.” He similarly traces—at a high level—the shift from people like Raymond Lowey, Walter Dorwin Teague, Henry Dreyfuss, and Norman Bel Geddes being considered “artists in industry” to being termed “industrial designers.”
Noyes was the first MoMA curator on industrial design, and emphasized more of these aesthetics—a “rational elegance” and the elimination of ornamentation, where objects should integrate themselves into a productive whole in their users’ homes. Comfort would not be an indulgence—contra Noyes’ Puritan roots—but, rather, would fulfill functional criteria for use. In doing so, designers would efface “the boundary between human being and machine, as both subject and object comfortably inhabit and identify themselves with one another.” Design, in this form, would be a sort of “anaesthetic,” and, by predetermining success criteria, designers could solve problems through pure “brute force” experimentation, trying often hundreds of possibilities and winnowing them down based on success.
Noyes would go on to the Office of Strategic Services in DC, where he’d meet Thomas J. Watson Jr. and become his lifelong friend. Noyes would leave OSS to work in Norman Bel Geddes’ practice; Bel Geddes, perhaps not coincidentally, would be awarded a commission from IBM. Noyes worked on this, and eventually took a new contract from IBM for an electric typewriter with him, starting his own practice.
Near this time, control of IBM shifted from Thomas J. Watson Sr. to his son Thomas J. Watson Jr. He’d go on to invest heavily in computers, but also hoped to unify IBM’s appearance. “ The scattershot appearance of IBM’s printed material, [designer Paul] Rand made plain, rendered it impossible for the “average buyer” to identify IBM as a coherent and concrete entity.” Design language was particularly important for a company like IBM with such complex products; when consumers could not easily understand IBM’s merchandise, they would need to rely on IBM’s good name.
Watson Jr. would eventually bring on Noyes as a “consultant director of design.” It was important that he remain outside of the corporation; he could link its processes through design and maintain a private practice beyond it. Further, Noyes stipulated that he would only take the job with full access to top management, in hopes that design could pervade the whole organization; he told Watson he wanted to work “with rather than for” him.
Chapter 2 takes up this new IBM design program. Some of the earliest experimentations here were Paul Rand’s early logo for the company, which remains in use today. While Rand claims no representation intent, Harwood makes an interesting case for its influence by information theory; The IBM logo’s horizontal lines are set apart at regular vertical intervals like the alternating crests and valleys of a communications signal; the discrete quality of the lines even within a single register evokes the dashes and spaces of telegraphy (save for the dots). As Rand later complained, the design was almost too successful in its literal evo- cation of the aesthetics of communication: ‘Every logo that some designers do has stripes . . . stripes have become symbolic of the latest in technology.’” The logo, too, could be seen as paralleling boolean logic and redundancy in its stripes.
Harwood then ventures into a more thorough history of the computer, particularly in architectural terms. He notes that some of the terms and metaphors used to describe the computer generate ideological misconceptions, for example, the shift of the term “computer” from person to machine. Harwood also puts forth a particularly compelling critique of the Turing Test: “Thus, one may see (1) that the entire question of ‘machine intelligence’ is thus one of the mediation between the human being and the machine in question by language rendered on a printer or display; (2) that the placement of each subject concealed at a distance from the others is essential to the experiment; and (3) leading to my second objection to Turing’s thesis, that the material apparatus of the test is, on either side of the screen, not computer or human being, but computer and human being—in short, a man–machine system, coordinated by an interface.”
Thomas J. Watson Sr. framed the computer in particularly grand terms, mirroring his cult-of-personality approach to leadership; “This machine will assist the scientist in institutions of learning, in government, and in industry to explore the consequences of man’s thought to the outermost reaches of time, space, and physical conditions.” The senior Watson, interestingly, almost divested from computing research, due to its cost; Watson Jr. doubled down on their commitment and pushed IBM to the front of the pack for several years.
Initial computer designs by Noyes and others hoped to dramatize workings of the new machine, showing inner mechanics. Noyes seemed to want to “bring complex parts into a whole” and described it in terms like a house. For example, talking about an early IBM computer (RAMAC), Noyes wrote that it “should not be like a ranch house. They should be like a Mies house. They should have that much integrity and joy.”
Harwood also quotes Edgar Kaufmann Jr.’s design guidelines for IBM in full, which yield interesting insight into other views of the computer. “The relationship between computer, cabinet, and operator required the deployment not of a trope of transparency, but rather a strategic analogy…Simply put, Kaufmann here reset the terms of the design problem not as a matter of what the computer is, but of what the computer is like.” In essence, Kaufmman hoped to express logical processes of the computer, even if this created some structural dishonesty.
This is paralleled in what several designers called the “furnace approach to the design of the computer,” efforts to divide and concentrate logical elements. In essence, designers should abstract away as much complexity as possible, moving elements ofr processing (“the cellar”) away from elements of use and input/output that human users would touch (“the parlor”).
Harwood devotes lots of time to this sort of spatial view of computing. Early computer design was heavily influenced by Henry Dreyfuss’ “The Measure of Man,” which reimagined the body as a surface that could be laid in contact with the interface between body and machine. Similarly, the computer could be seen as a sort of spatial expansion; its design, particularly in advertising, “gave an impression of a keyhole view into an impossibly vast space. This grid, the image implies, could extend to surround the entire globe, enclosing its surfaces within the counterenvironmental space of the interface.”
Chapter 3 offers some treatment of IBM building architecture; much of this heavily references Rehinold Martin’s work, and I think Martin handles it more compellingly. Spatial metaphors remain interesting. For example, Watson compares IBM to the railroad, in that the company “increased the tempo of business activities…The foundation on which our business is built is the saving of time for all people and all industries throughout the world, to give more time in which to do given tasks, and to make available more time for still further advancement and progress.” The company seemed to always think of itself in these sorts of board terms; at the 1939 World’s Fair, its slogan was “World Peace Through World Trade,” and IBM heavily emphasized its own international presence.
IBM City, an exhibition at the world’s fair, emphasized the set of ‘new ground rules’ resulting from teletechnology, particularly the collapse of space given telecommunications. IBM could be seen as reorganizing information and space into more productive representational structures, or “extending man’s control over environment;’ as the core of its mission, this could expand to global scale. Harwood puts this simply; “The message was clear: IBM would ad- minister the bureaucratic functions of the reexpanding supranational economies of the West with an invisible hand.”
Chapter 4 treats IBM’s ‘spectacles’ and exhibits, used to shape public opinion about the computer. The company was engaged in “a constant struggle to establish control over the public image of the computer” particularly because of public backlash about its use and antitrust enforcement. Some of these were about techno-optimism, including presentations that described the history of science and its pioneers—Newton, Kepler, others—with the computer at its logical end. These presentations “placed the human being at the edge of a new frontier, in which the stable epistemological structures of the Newtonian era would be again dismantled and in need of reconstruction…Watson was no intellectual, but he did have what one might call an intuitive understanding that placing IBM at the vanguard of scientific prog- ress was a good sales pitch”
There’s interesting further articulation of how IBM saw the computer here, particularly in terms of organization; “For Eames and IBM, everything was always already a system, with a need for order, an order that could only be provided through the science of modeling or simulation…the construction of an inter- face that would prompt a certain form of thought conducive to solving a systems-based problem.” Many further exhibitions, like one called ‘Mathematica” hoped to show mathematical views of daily life. The company also sought to shape how individuals viewed their relation with the computer, to mediate IBM’s being “blamed” for various deficiencies or user error.
Harwood’s conclusion is brief, gesturing at other design programs that followed suit.
I enjoyed this book a lot, particularly the first two chapters. Much of it builds on Martin’s work, particularly with respect to themes of organization in early conceptions of the computer, and design / architectural artifacts made by and for companies focused on computing. I found some of the most insightful bits here to be analysis and commentary about internal communications between designers about how to depict the computer, and about how ‘industrial design’ functions; essentially, how corporate identity is produced, and, more interestingly, how to build compelling corporate identity that incorporates and communicates metaphors of computing. I similarly found some of the design considerations—particularly the “furnace model of computing” and ways of depicting the computer’s nature rather than its direct form. There’s brief gesturing at some of the impact of information theory and cybernetics on organizational design that, at times, I wish was taken up more thoroughly, but remains interesting. Very interesting read, makes me want to pick up more about the Eames video works (particularly “A Communications Primer” and “Information Machine”)
October 11, 2014
Good intentions, but inaccurate and misleading.
I applaud the author's objective to present the historical context of the IBM Design Program as being the first comprehensive effort of an American corporation to successfully transform corporate identity across a broad range of design on a global basis. This extraordinary effort by Eliot Noyes, Paul Rand and Charles Eames as IBM's original corporate consultants is without peer.
However, while the author's intent is commendable, there are many glaring inaccuracies. One of several major errors is the author's assertion that after Noyes and Eames passed away in 1977, "...IBM did not deign to replace either of its leading consultants. A design system was in place, and it only required consultants in minor areas." In this regard, the author claims: "Richard Sapper was given responsibility for overseeing graphic and industrial design in the European laboratories, but the rest of Noyes's and Eames's responsibilities were distributed to a cadre of thirteen design managers."
I spent twenty-two years in the IBM Design Program (1970-1992) as an industrial designer, design center manager, division design manager and corporate head of the IBM Design Program and, as such, interacted directly with Noyes, Rand and Sapper during my tenure at the company. Therefore, I can attest to the fact that Richard Sapper was never given any responsibility whatsoever for overseeing graphic design in Europe, nor anywhere else in IBM for that matter. Furthermore, Sapper's industrial design responsibilities were on a global basis, not only limited to Europe as the author asserts. The IBM corporate consulting role for Sapper mirrored those of Noyes within the context of designing archetypal IBM products (as exemplified by Sapper's ThinkPad), and regularly providing advice and counsel for the entire IBM product line across 15 global IBM design centers.
Therefore, the author's concluding supposition of the IBM Design Program's "...eventual failure to outlast the lives of its main protagonists, Noyes, Eames and Rand", is woefully incorrect. While the presence of Noyes's overarching leadership was truly missed, Sapper was appointed to the product design consultancy position in 1980 and brought his extraordinarily successful innovation track record to IBM. Also, Rand continued to serve IBM as a corporate graphic design consultant into the 1990s and also recommended distinguished information designer Edward Tufte to consult with the company, as well as utilized Swiss designers Josef Müller-Brockman and Karl Gerstner to help with graphic design across Europe. Additionally, following Noyes's death, Gerald McCue, Dean of Harvard University Graduate School of Design was appointed to be IBM's corporate consultant on architecture.
Yet another inaccuracy is the author's assertion that the iconic IBM Rebus design by Paul Rand (1981) "...was a violation of every rule he had established in the preceding years regarding the sanctity of IBM graphics" and implying Rand's innovative rebus concept was due to the IBM Design Program being "greatly weakened in Noyes's absence." The truth is that only IBM's legal department initially thought Rand's innovative rebus would somehow violate IBM's logo trademark protection. Rand and design management fought this perception and eventually prevailed, resulting in the IBM rebus becoming a classic icon in the annals of graphic design. IBM continues to use the rebus today to symbolize IBM as humanistic and innovative.
While this book provides a generalized insight into the IBM Design Program's scope and impact on modern design culture, its content contains numerous mistakes and the author's concluding supposition is based on inaccurate claims. Consequently, this book is not recommended as an accurate, scholarly account of IBM Design Program history. Instead, read: "Eliot Noyes" by Gordon Bruce, "Paul Rand" by Steven Heller and "Eames Design" by John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart and Ray Eames for a credible history of the seminal IBM Design Program.
I applaud the author's objective to present the historical context of the IBM Design Program as being the first comprehensive effort of an American corporation to successfully transform corporate identity across a broad range of design on a global basis. This extraordinary effort by Eliot Noyes, Paul Rand and Charles Eames as IBM's original corporate consultants is without peer.
However, while the author's intent is commendable, there are many glaring inaccuracies. One of several major errors is the author's assertion that after Noyes and Eames passed away in 1977, "...IBM did not deign to replace either of its leading consultants. A design system was in place, and it only required consultants in minor areas." In this regard, the author claims: "Richard Sapper was given responsibility for overseeing graphic and industrial design in the European laboratories, but the rest of Noyes's and Eames's responsibilities were distributed to a cadre of thirteen design managers."
I spent twenty-two years in the IBM Design Program (1970-1992) as an industrial designer, design center manager, division design manager and corporate head of the IBM Design Program and, as such, interacted directly with Noyes, Rand and Sapper during my tenure at the company. Therefore, I can attest to the fact that Richard Sapper was never given any responsibility whatsoever for overseeing graphic design in Europe, nor anywhere else in IBM for that matter. Furthermore, Sapper's industrial design responsibilities were on a global basis, not only limited to Europe as the author asserts. The IBM corporate consulting role for Sapper mirrored those of Noyes within the context of designing archetypal IBM products (as exemplified by Sapper's ThinkPad), and regularly providing advice and counsel for the entire IBM product line across 15 global IBM design centers.
Therefore, the author's concluding supposition of the IBM Design Program's "...eventual failure to outlast the lives of its main protagonists, Noyes, Eames and Rand", is woefully incorrect. While the presence of Noyes's overarching leadership was truly missed, Sapper was appointed to the product design consultancy position in 1980 and brought his extraordinarily successful innovation track record to IBM. Also, Rand continued to serve IBM as a corporate graphic design consultant into the 1990s and also recommended distinguished information designer Edward Tufte to consult with the company, as well as utilized Swiss designers Josef Müller-Brockman and Karl Gerstner to help with graphic design across Europe. Additionally, following Noyes's death, Gerald McCue, Dean of Harvard University Graduate School of Design was appointed to be IBM's corporate consultant on architecture.
Yet another inaccuracy is the author's assertion that the iconic IBM Rebus design by Paul Rand (1981) "...was a violation of every rule he had established in the preceding years regarding the sanctity of IBM graphics" and implying Rand's innovative rebus concept was due to the IBM Design Program being "greatly weakened in Noyes's absence." The truth is that only IBM's legal department initially thought Rand's innovative rebus would somehow violate IBM's logo trademark protection. Rand and design management fought this perception and eventually prevailed, resulting in the IBM rebus becoming a classic icon in the annals of graphic design. IBM continues to use the rebus today to symbolize IBM as humanistic and innovative.
While this book provides a generalized insight into the IBM Design Program's scope and impact on modern design culture, its content contains numerous mistakes and the author's concluding supposition is based on inaccurate claims. Consequently, this book is not recommended as an accurate, scholarly account of IBM Design Program history. Instead, read: "Eliot Noyes" by Gordon Bruce, "Paul Rand" by Steven Heller and "Eames Design" by John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart and Ray Eames for a credible history of the seminal IBM Design Program.
March 8, 2012
An exhaustive and incredible survey of the role of Eliot Noyes, Charles Eames and many others in the IBM Design Program. Though ostensibly focused on architecture, Harwood effectively integrates industrial, graphics, and exhibition design through a series of chapters that explore the role of designers in the development of both the computer and the multinational corporation. Harwood argues that the role of these designers, Noyes in particular, was essential in the establishment of the role of interfaces on both fronts. In outlining the division between "parlor and coal cellar" in the design of computers, and naturalizing the increasingly prominent role of computers and other teletechnologies in daily life through exhibitions and architecture, the IBM Design Program transformed the role of design in both realms.
Harwood's concluding observations have to contend with the further transformation of these technologies (1976-Present) and this presents some difficulty. Noyes, through his prominent role as design consultant, seems to have designed and managed his way out of the process, made his role redundant. Harwood, however, sees possibilities in the research at hand, most notably, progress toward the removal of aestheticization from histories of architecture and technology. The appearance of things, he argues, is not the most effective way of unpacking their significance any longer.
Harwood's concluding observations have to contend with the further transformation of these technologies (1976-Present) and this presents some difficulty. Noyes, through his prominent role as design consultant, seems to have designed and managed his way out of the process, made his role redundant. Harwood, however, sees possibilities in the research at hand, most notably, progress toward the removal of aestheticization from histories of architecture and technology. The appearance of things, he argues, is not the most effective way of unpacking their significance any longer.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews