Jacqueline S. Casey practiced an intuitive and organic Modernism. From 1955 to 1989, she was a designer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Office of Publications, first under the direction of Muriel Cooper (I believe that this is totally wrong. The only person in charge of all office staff members was John “Mattill” as “Head” of the Office of Publications. All other staffers (editors, proof readers, designers, secretaries) held the same rank. It is also true, that Muriel learned about design from Jackie and Ralph, not the other way around. Her background was “art education”. Muriel was ambitious, but not thoroughly trained, disciplined or well organized.) and in 1972 as the director, where she explored a personal interpretation of visual and textual relationships. Blending function with imagination, Casey said of her design, “My work combines two cultures: the American interest in visual metaphor on the one hand, and the Swiss fascination with planning, fastidiousness, control over technical execution on the other.” Casey’s contributions are ahead of their time and significantly shaped a the graphic language of an American institute.
Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, Casey attended the Massachusetts College of Art (MassArt) where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus on fashion design and illustration. After graduating in 1949, she worked briefly with fashion, advertising and interiors but never secured a job worthy of her interests; frustrated, she said, “I broke the negative cycle by traveling through Europe for three months” and returned “with the decision to focus my life on something related to the arts…to develop my visual sensitivity.”
Inquisitive and eager, Casey landed a job at MIT in 1955 designing “summer session” materials, hired (wrong: she was recommended by her friend and fellow MassArt alumna, Muriel R. Cooper (1925-1994) and invited to join by John Mattill). Cooper, a feminist and pioneer designer, educator and researcher with her own legacy; notable as the first design director for the MIT Press. During this time, the newly established MIT Office of Publications (later renamed Design Services) was a radical idea. Founded and directed by science writer/editor, John Mattill whose Modernist vision set forth the development from editorial services to academic design. Cooper was the department’s first office employee responsible for handling its graphics, and considered one of the earliest American designers to be hired by a private research institute.
“In my early days at MIT, a designer working on summer materials would interview faculty and have a minicourse in a subject such as radioisotopes from the professor in charge. There was an opportunity to learn something new everyday,” Casey recalled. When Cooper left (Muriel left for a study in Europe, and actually as I see it, not to return to MIT but to find more interesting work somewhere else, especially salaries, opportunities, which did not materialize. By the time she approaches MIT again, I was hired and the slot was permanently filled. In retrospect she was not as loyal as Jackie). Casey took over to direct the office (Not so. She may have been instrumental in the appointment of Ralph Coburn as a part-timer, but John Mattill continued to run the office until he was appointed editor of the Technology Review, and that with very strict, sometimes heavy-handed and very persuasive attitudes . . . which any feminist would have despised.) She fostered a creative environment, responsible for designing academic communications — posters, brochures, catalogs and other printed collateral to help promote MIT events, programs, academic lectures and art exhibitions ranging from subjects on science to music to technology. Of her designs Casey said, “My job is to stop anyone I can with an arresting or puzzling image, and entice the viewer to read the message in small type and above all to attend the exhibition,” Elizabeth Resnick wrote in Eye, 2008
Alongside Casey, Design Services grew to include two additional full-time designers or “staffers” as they were called: Ralph Coburn (b. 1923) from 1957–1988 and Dietmar Winkler from 1965–1970. Coburn, a proficient Modern painter was ”instrumental in fostering minimalist typography and design” and he “became very comfortable in experimenting with different typographic systems.” Coburn “did not just adopt Swiss Design,” said Winkler, “he explored and expanded upon it … into a very personal approach.”
Notable was a cast of European visiting designers invited by Matill over the years to work on summer session materials including: George Adams (Teltscher) a former Jewish Bauhaus student, Denis Postle and John Lees of England, Walter Plata of Germany and Paul Talman and Thérèse Moll of Switzerland. Americans also made important contributions as design staff and consultants: Nancy Cahners (1973-1983), David Colley, Bob Cipriani and Harold Pattek. “She [Casey] had great trust in her colleague’s abilities,” Winkler said, and furthermore “we shared between us the same values.”
Of all the visiting designers, the one who left a lasting impact on Casey was Moll, who worked for a brief period in the summer of 1958. Moll was a friend and assistant to Karl Gerstner in Basel. “She introduced the office to European typography…well trained in the design of modular systems. This use of proportions in designing publications series became a useful tool,” Casey said. Furthermore, with regards to using mathematical grid systems she is quoted in Ellen Lupton’s MIT/CASEY exhibition catalog, “It is important to have a process in which logic determines where things are placed. I use the grid because I won’t build a page without first laying the foundation.”
Along with IBM, the Container Corporation of American, J.R. Geigy chemical and pharmaceuticals and Unimark International, as well numerous individual designers (many included in this book), Design Services played a critical role in helping popularize the Swiss gospel throughout the USA during the 1960s and beyond. Casey’s references run wide and deep. She was heavily impacted by Swiss and German Modernists including: Karl Gerstner, Josef-Muller-Brockmann, Armin Hofmann, Emil Ruder and Anton Stankowski. She was particularly interested in the aluminized silver, shiny paper that Tomoko Miho used in her “The Great Architecture in Chicago” poster and went on to experiment with her own glossy, metallic materials and inks. Casey was well informed of many expressive and experimental photographers, artists, musicians and writers—as evidenced in some of her work. She said, “The most constant part of my approach to design has always been the search for information…It starts out with gathering material: an interview with the client, taking notes and establishing the client’s objectives, a library visit…determining the purpose of the communication, the audience, looking for any hint of special significance to make a more accurate and vital statement.” (Posters, Winkler, 1992)
Casey’s designs were unified but rarely standardized. She experimented with modular abstractions, empty space and scale, visual metaphors and language, explored various color and printing techniques and regularly utilized modern typography (Standard (It is my belief that Akzidenz Grotesk is not available in Boston. It was in New York, but low MIT budgets did not allow any venturing. She could have used photostats) , Photon Univers and Helvetica). “Casey’s posters weave their magic through beautiful compositions and handsome typographic treatments,” noted Joseph P. Arnell, the Chair of the Visual Arts Department at Otterbain College, “But they are far more than pretty faces. Through a marriage of ideas and images, words and pictures, her posters make us stop, look and think. Then, they challenge us to understand.” (Posters, Winkler, 1992)
For the dedicated Casey, “MIT was much more than a workplace. It was her identity and life, her home,” Winkler said, She retired in 1989 and was appointed to the Media Laboratory as a visiting design scholar. For more than thirty years, she was a dependable force and an accelerator of change, not only for for MIT but for designers worldwide. “While MIT has its roots in tradition, the university represents all that is experimental, exciting and future-orientated. For me designing is highly personal and private,” Casey summed up, “my objective is to design a product with an accurate visual and verbal message that can be understood by the audience”.