The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts MIT’s publishing operations were 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 later […]
Month: January 2019
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, there is no way that Muriel Cooper would have been in the position of appointing/hiring Jackie Casey. I agree that Muriel was able […]
The Harvard Business Review
Unfortunately, I have always made snap decisions, never weighing financial security in favor over personal integrity. Driving home from a day of pure misery at WGBH, I made the decision to quit the next morning, and did. Without discussing or weighing circumstance or ramification, I had my wife’s approval. My family had come through WW […]
1970’s, Harvard Business Review, Edward Tufte
In the early 1970s, the editors of the Harvard Business Review, received a critical letter from Edward Tufte, scolding its design director – me – as basically incompetent in designing intelligent diagrams for the journal’s audience. He introduced himself as an expert and included his book as example of good design. It was the first […]
Alexander Nesbitt
Alexander Nesbitt, calligrapher, historian of typography, and teacher, was born 1901 in Paterson, New Jersey. He worked for many years in New York City as a graphic designer and teacher. In 1950, he published “History and Technique of Lettering,” which became a classic in the field. Later, he taught at the Rhode Island School of […]
Being Abandoned – Being at Home
Christmas 1944 is the moment which signals the beginning of my growing sense of abandonment. It is the last holiday that my parents, sister, and I would spend together. Right thereafter, my father, as general practitioner in medicine, was called to the “Volkssturm,” a German national militia established during the last months of World War […]
Life in the 1960’s
Reasons for Visiting the USA Working for Chemie Grünenthal GmbH, the design staff had to respond to the advertising campaigns for medications that were produced on the premises under licenses for American Cyanamid, Lederle, and others. These corporations asked us to use their promotional materials for the European market. A very distinct problem emerged; physicians […]
Notes on Personal Bias
Simplicity vs. Complexity Singularity vs. Plurality When a teacher is given the opportunity to assess the work of students, who are spending time and energy defining their own philosophical positions, I consider it only fair that he is asked to provide a statement so that they can recognize in his presentations and critiques his framework […]