Artist of the day: Artist of the day, August 22: Muriel Cooper, American graphic designer

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Artist of the day, August 22: Muriel Cooper, American graphic designer

Muriel Cooper (1925 – 1994) was a pioneering book designer, digital designer, researcher, and educator. She was the longtime art director of the MIT Press, instilling a Bauhaus-influenced design style into its many publications. She moved on to become founder of MIT's Visible Language Workshop, and later became a co-founder of the MIT Media Lab. In 2007, a New York Times article called her "the design heroine you've probably never heard of".

Ms. Cooper joined the M.I.T. Press in 1967 as its first art director and helped produce more than 500 books. She began teaching at M.I.T. in 1974, concentrating on the relationship between graphics and technology. She became an assistant professor in 1977 and a full professor in 1988.

Ms. Cooper was a graduate of Ohio State University and the Massachusetts College of Art. In 1992 she was the first recipient of the Robert P. Gersin Design Excellence Award, given to graduates of the Massachusetts College of Art.

Cooper was one of the first graphic designers to apply her skills to the computer screen. Having co-founded the Visible Language Workshop at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973, she ran it until her death in 1994, and taught many of today's most gifted software designers.

Unlike conventional design heroes, Cooper isn't just important because of her own work, but for her influence on other designers. By encouraging them through teaching and research to make the images on our computers as clear and appealing as the best-designed printed graphics, she helped to make all of our lives easier. But because digital design seems so esoteric, and is usually discussed in geek-speak, Cooper is barely known outside that circle. That's why she's the design heroine you've probably never heard of.

All that will change. It's bound to, because it's impossible to imagine future design historians ignoring the fact that we now consume most of our information and entertainment on screen, not in print. The process of designing on-screen graphics might seem opaque to most of us now, but will soon be regarded as one of the most important areas of design. And my guess is that Cooper will then be recognized as one of its most influential figures.