DESIGNERS | MURIEL COOPER :: POLYMATH EXTRAORDINAIRE

Muriel Cooper | 1925-1994

One of the giants of 20th-century design

Muriel Cooper using a Polaroid SX-70 for a self-portrait; video imaging at Visible Language Workshop, 1977

MIT Media Lab rendred as Soft Type, 1990

Composite comparison of calligraphy at three resolution levels, VLW 1990

Three self-portraits by a Visual Language Workshop student, using early copy, paste, and distort techniques, recorded with Polaroid, 1982

Books produced for the MIT Press during Muriel Cooper’s tenure as media director, 1969-1977

In 1967 Cooper joined the MIT Press as its first art director. Above: her logo for the Press, 1963

MIT Summer Session announcements, 1958

The official history of the Media Lab by Stewart Brand (The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT, MIT Press, 1989) makes scant reference to this remarkable woman who was, at the time of her death, the only female tenured professor at the lab. Three entries in the index lead to passing mentions but, despite chapter-length discussions of other departments at this latter-day Bauhaus, not one is devoted to the Visible Language Workshop.

“Muriel Cooper’s Visible Wisdom” by Janet Abrams