Muriel Cooper - MIT Press

MIT Press

In 1952, Cooper became the first art director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology office of publication originally known as Design Services, which later became MIT Press. After teaching at MIT for six years, Cooper left in 1958 to take a Fullbright Scholarship in Milan; this allowed Muriel Cooper to lecture and conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields, and to participate in seminars.

When Cooper returned in 1963, she opened an independent graphic studio in Boston, Massachusetts. The MIT Press was among Cooper's various clients, leading to her design of its trademark logo, an abstracted set of seven vertical bars with a play on the vertical strokes of the initial letters. The logo has been called a high-water mark in twentieth century graphic design. As the longtime art director of MIT Press, she promoted the Bauhaus-influenced, modernist look of their books and other publications. Cooper also recruited graphic designer and fellow MassArt alumna Jacqueline Casey to her own lengthy career at MIT, where Casey designed many posters and smaller publications in a modernist style.

In 1967, Cooper returned to a fulltime position at the MIT Press. In addition to being the founder of the office of publications, Cooper took on the position of being the first director of design and media. Having influenced the design of the iconic book Bauhaus (published by MIT Press in 1969), she also made a film rendition of the book. The film attempted to give a speedy version of translating interactive experiences from a computer to paper. This endeavor was her response to the challenge of turning time into space.

Cooper maintained her position with the MIT Press until 1974, and oversaw the release of a series of titles in architecture, economics, biology, computer science and sociology that formed a critical discourse around systems, feedback loops and control.