Muriel Cooper was a designer, researcher, and educator. Born in 1925 in Brookline, Boston, Massachusetts, and passed away in 1994, aged 68. She is best known for her accomplishment from being a graphic designer. Cooper received her BA from Ohio State University and her BS in education, also a BFA in design from MassArt. She had worked at MIT Press and MIT Media Lab as a designer for over forty years.
Cooper is an early believer that programming can change the field of graphic design. She inspired a generation of designers to explore the intersection of design and technology, and in the process, established a group of creative programmers who are now shaping interaction design, graphic design, and new media art.
She had over five hundred publications in design, such as the first edition of “Learning from Las Vegas” and the classic book “Bauhaus” All of her research and contributions had become the cornerstone and indicators of the design field. Cooper had challenged our understanding and experience of interactive digital communication. She pioneered computers in graphic design and used computers to create visual depth, movement, size changes, focus shifts, and 3D fonts in designs during her career.
These designs were unique at the time and were quite groundbreaking. Cooper’s work and design methods have had a massive impact on modern digital design.
Bibliography
Libraries, Columbia University. “Print and Screen, Muriel Cooper at MIT.” Academic Commons, 1 Jan. 1970, academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8VM5VC5.
Kwun, Aileen. “Messages and Means: Muriel Cooper at MIT.” Design and Culture, 21 Apr. 2015, www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2752/175470715X14153615623808?casa_token=S9PCQP0T_moAAAAA%3A0LSFUeb-TndAQSAj8WGEKc8T2wp99Ab-XU3VJzCEJzU5VTvb1wFcBMn8XkMYcSuSyUgcjhyI6Ifc.
Small, David. “Expressive Typography.” High Quality Dynamic and Responsive Typography in the Electronic Environment, Feb. 1990, dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/14011/23158113-MIT.pdf?sequence=2.
Carlos, Dante. “Muriel Cooper: Turning Time into Space.” We Stand with Our Community, 9 Apr. 2014, walkerart.org/magazine/muriel-cooper-turning-time-into-space.
thanks for sharing! the picture of her works helps me to know the concept that she had.
It seems her experimental work on computer world. The bauhaus poster shows the accumulation of multiple people and their contribution for the movement.
Cooper’s identity of an educator is making me respecting her more.