Design History: Muriel Cooper

The Simultaneous Mediums of

Muriel Cooper

Muriel Cooper was a graphic designer best known for her explorations of and experimentation with the interactions between technology and design. Through her work as a book designer, digital designer, researcher, and educator Cooper was able to significantly influence and impact how design is presented, even today. Cooper received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio State in 1944, followed by a Bachelor of Fine Art in design in 1948, and finally concluded her education at Massachusetts College of Art after receiving a Bachelor of Science in Education in 1951. In 1952 Cooper became a freelance designer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Office of Publications, which would eventually become MIT Press, with Cooper serving as the Design Director. Here is where Cooper’s most iconic works were created and where her reputation as an influential designer was formed.

Cooper’s design style was primarily influenced by the Bauhaus School of Design, with many of her works including aspects such as abstract thinking, primary shapes and colors, and an interest in how typography could be utilized as a part of a design rather than an afterthought. Her philosophy when it came to designing was best summarized by a statement she wrote about her own career, saying: “Her concerns have always been with beginnings and process. More with change and technology and their meanings to human communication than with rigorous graphic design theory and style” (“Muriel Cooper”).

Image by Marie Cosindas

M M uriel’s agnum opus

During a short period, beginning in 1963, Cooper opened her own independent graphic studio in Massachusetts, where MIT Press was one of her clients. During this time, Cooper designed one of the most well-known works of her career: the MIT Press logo. The final logo design incorporates seven vertical strokes or rectangles that spell out “MITP.” The first of the longer strokes extends upwards, indicating a lowercase “t,” whereas the next stroke extends downwards, creating the descender of a lowercase “p.”

The final design is also meant to emulate a row of book spines, an idea that can be seen taking shape in some of Cooper’s sketches during the creation process.

Sketches for the MIT Press Logo, 1963-1964. Seeing the final product is always amazing, but sometimes it can be helpful to get inside the mind of a designer and see their thought processes, such as these sketches created by Muriel during her design process.

MIT Press Logo (colophon), 1965. The final form of Muriel’s logo design which may be hard to understand at first glance, but once you spend some time pondering can be read as “mitp”. This work was quite literally the crown jewel of Muriel’s work as a designer.

This work fits into, or quite literally exemplifies, Cooper’s approach to design through its abstraction, simplicity, and, as described by MIT Press, “an embracement of the aesthetics and approach that mass production had introduced into the twentieth century” (“University Press Week”). Cooper was aware this logo would

be plastered on everything ranging from brochures to letterheads, booklets, and so much more. The final form of Cooper’s logo looks very simple, but this does not take away from all of the research and understanding that went into creating such a compelling and iconic example of design communications.

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Hans M. Wingler, Bauhaus: paperback cover image. Redesigned by Muriel Cooper, 14” x 10” x 2.5” 1969. The cover design for this book is interesting to look at in a timeline of Muriel’s career because you can see the influence that this work has echoing all throughout the remainder of her life.

After returning to MIT Press full-time in 1967, Cooper soon after began work on one of her most well-known publications, The Bauhaus. This book was monumental in all aspects, including its design, size, and content. Published in 1969, the 50th anniversary of the Bauhaus School of Design’s founding, the book included two hundred archival documents and eight hundred illustrations, translated into English for the first time, that encompassed all there was to know and understand about the Bauhaus design movement.

It took Cooper nearly two years of devotion to enlarge, revise, and redesign the book from an earlier German edition. She typeset the text in Helvetica and used a grid system layout

“I thought

about

books

as being like a movie.

Once I presented the Bauhaus book as a single-frame movie— showing all the pages in rapid succession. It was fantastic.”

“All of my books explored implicit motion. The Bauhaus was designed both statically and filmically with a mental model of slow motion animation of the page elements.”

to evoke a strong modernist appearance. This work fits into Cooper’s design philosophy and style in multiple ways. A majority of her work following this publication can largely be attributed to Bauhaus design elements, with many of her latter works including the use of Helvetica, abstraction, simple color schemes, and all-encompassing design methods.

This publication also helped further her interest and explorations into the possibilities of the newly emerging tool of computer based design. After its initial publication, Cooper experimented with the different aspects of the book, creating posters, films, and an exhibition based on the book’s design. Designing this book was monumental for her as she addressed some of her anxieties about how technology would impact design while pushing herself to take design into new forms of media outside of simple pen and paper.

Hans M. Wingler, Bauhaus: Promotional Poster for the MIT Press Publication, 1969. Creating a design is one thing, but fully understanding your design and being able to apply it to other forms of media truly speaks to the capabilities of a good designer.

From 1952 to 1974, Cooper worked full-time for, or with, MIT Press, eventually becoming Design Director in 1967. During her time as Design Director, nearly 500 books and other publications were published under her authority, many of which had covers and layouts designed by her. While these books varied in their purposes and content, specific standards and characteristics of Cooper’s design style and philosophy were evident throughout the book designs.

Drawing much inspiration from her work on The Bauhaus book, she continued to incorporate ideas such as primary shapes and colors, layering of text, and the

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The Mathematical Sciences: A Collection of Essays, George A. W. Boehm, M.I.T. Press, 1969. An interesting aspect of design to think about when looking at this cover is positive and negative space. The block shapes Muriel created imply the form of stacking cubes while also making the viewer think about the process of their creation with simple black and white lines for their construction.

books & publications

MIT Press MIT Press MIT Press MIT Press MIT Press MIT Press MIT Press MIT Press MIT Press MIT Press MIT Press

multifaceted use of Helvetica. Take, for example, the book titled Impact of Uncertainty on Location, published by MIT Press in 1972. In this cover design, Cooper utilized a central abstract blue shape on a solid green background surrounded by the book information typed in Helvetica. This cover shows how she was able to experiment with new forms and ideas of how a cover should look.

Another example of a cover designed by Cooper would be The Mathematical Sciences: A Collection of Essays. This cover uses simple shapes or, in actuality, lines communicating the idea of a three-dimensional form, simple colors, and Helvetica. One final notable aspect of many books published under her is that she was constantly pushing the boundaries of what could be accomplished with the new form of computers in design, a significant aspect of her design philosophy. In many of her publications, Cooper used computer typesetting to more effectively control the layout of detailed pages and spreads.

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Webber, Michael J., Impact of Uncertainty on Location, Cambridge, The M.I.T. Press, 1972. Using an abstract shape on the cover of a book that was focused on scientific understanding and observation is quite an interesting choice, but Muriel was able to pull it off well. Much of Muriel’s philosophy was rooted in the process and implied motion of a design, which is exemplified in this cover.

“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 course poster, Visible Language Workshop, MIT, Muriel Cooper and Ron MacNeil, 1974. If anyone was ever curious about a work that accurately displays the types of colors Muriel used in her work, this would be the one. The use of color and layering where the text interacts makes this piece all the more interesting and visually engaging.

In 1974 Cooper left her position at MIT Press to found MIT’s Visible Language Workshop (VLW). Here she, alongside designer Ron MacNeil, taught students interactive media and design and encouraged them to explore the possibilities of new computing and printing technologies. A particularly influential and important design from this period in Cooper’s career would be her Messages and Means Course Poster. Messages and Means was a course described by Cooper as “design and communication for print that integrated the reproduction tools as part of the thinking process and reduced the gap between process and product” (Carlos).

This course was the beginning stage of the Visible Language Workshop. In the poster, she uses layers and colors to create an interesting composition consisting of the course title repeated over and over again. This design is representative of Cooper’s philosophy of creating spatially responsive designs and implements many other stylistic elements often seen in her work, such as abstraction, layering, primary colors, and of course Helvetica. Throughout her time at the VLW, Cooper pushed her students and herself to create thoughtful designs that examined what design could be across different forms of media and continued her exploration of the possibilities of computer display and design.

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In 1985 the Visible Language Workshop merged with the MIT Architecture Machine Group and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, two other organizations at MIT, to form the MIT Media Lab. Here is where Cooper carried out the remainder of her career. Through the Media Lab, she continued teaching students, many of whom became prominent digital designers and continued her never-ending explorations into dynamic and interactive computer typography.

An example of some of her work from this time would be a promotional design rendered for the MIT Media Lab in soft type. This design shows how she experimented

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with typography and its appearance, treating the words as the design themselves. By rendering the text with a softer and fading appearance, the words themselves can speak to some of the techniques and ideas that were likely explored in the MIT Media Lab. However, some characteristics of Cooper’s design style remain, such as the use of bright primary colors, the play between positive and negative space in the composition, and the use of Helvetica.

“When you start talking about design in relation to computers you’re not just talking about how information appears on the screen, you’re talking about how it’s designed into the architecture of the machine and of the language. You have different capabilities, different constraints and variables than you have in any other medium, and nobody even knows what they are yet.”

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MIT Media Lab rendered as Soft Type, 1990. This design truly embodies the dynamism often encapsulated in Muriel’s designs. The subtle fading, or softening, of the type adds a very human touch to a design, even though it was most likely rendered as an experiment to push the boundaries of what could be accomplished through computer design, something Muriel was very invested in.

Muriel Cooper remained a professor at MIT until her sudden passing in 1994, leaving behind a long legacy of impactful design. Throughout her career, Cooper was not only able to push her own methods of design in the newly emerging medium of technology but also “taught a new generation of designers who have helped shape our digital world” (Burgoyne). Though much of the style of her work was largely, Bauhaus-influenced, her work was driven by her continual interest in the capabilities of technology, interest in processes, and the ways in which design could be impactful. Throughout her over forty years of design work, Cooper influenced an entire generation of designers by constantly breaking down boundaries and antiquated ideas of what design could be, setting the stage for generations to follow.

Muriel in a meeting. Image from MIT Press.

Works cited

Burgoyne, Patrick. “Pentagram Celebrates the Work of Muriel Cooper.” Creative Review, Pentagram, 25 Mar. 2019, https://www.creativereview.co.uk/pentagram-celebrates-work-muriel-cooper/ (Images on p. 8, 13)

Carlos, Dante. “Muriel Cooper: Turning Time into Space.” Walker Art Center, Walker Art,9 Apr. 2014, https://walkerart.org/magazine/muriel-cooper-turning-time-into-space. (Image on p.10)

Cosindas, M. (2018). Muriel Cooper . MIT Media Lab. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/muriel-cooper-lasting-imprint/.

Evans, Margaret K. “Muriel Cooper’s Lasting Imprint.” MIT Media Lab, 9 Jan. 2018, https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/muriel-cooper-lasting-imprint/.

Miller, M. (2017, October 25). No. 164: Muriel Cooper Motion Graphics, a stylish political magazine, 50 years of National Theatre Posters + more. Eye on Design. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/no-164-cruz-novillos-ubiquitous-logos-a-stylish-political-magazine-50-years-of-national-theatre-posters-more/ (Image on p.9)

“Muriel Cooper, 68, Dies; Noted Graphic Designer.” MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1 June 1994, https://news.mit. edu/1994/cooper-0601.

Muriel Cooper. MIT Press. (2018, March 28). Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https:// mitpress.mit.edu/blog/muriel-cooper/ (Image on p.14)

“Muriel Cooper.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 July 2021, https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Muriel_Cooper. (Image on p. 5)

“University Press Week: Throwback Thursday Featuring Muriel Cooper.” MIT Press, 27 May 2022, https://mitpress.mit.edu/blog/university-press-week-throwback-thursday-featuring-muriel-cooper/. (Image on p.4)

“Visible Language Workshop Special Collection.” Visible Language Workshop – Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT), Art, Culture, and Technology , https://act.mit.edu/ special-collections/vlw-archive/.

Wiesenberger, Robert. “Latter-Day Bauhaus? - Muriel Cooper and the Digital Imaginary.” Bauhaus Imaginista, https://www.bauhaus-imaginista.org/articles/4980/latter-day-bauhaus#:~:text=Muriel%20Cooper%20and%20the%20Digital%20Imaginary&text=The%20Bauhaus%20is%20a%20monument,in%20at%20over%20ten%20pounds. (Images on p. 6, 7)

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This booklet was designed by Emma Hinkle using Adobe InDesign and Photoshop and printed on 70 lb text and 80lb gloss cover by Repros Print Shop in Charlotte, NC. The type is set primarily in Helvetica. © 2022