The mid-century is the age of interdisciplinary. Instead of focusing on one single aspect, designers from the mid-century experienced in different areas, and their works built the foundations for interaction design. And in this post, I want to write about the influences from multi-disciplined designers Charles and Ray Eams, Ladislav Sutnar, Karl Gerstner, and Henry Dreyfuss.
Henry Dreyfuss was an industrial designer who pioneered in studying people for better product designs. His study of humans is groundbreaking in the field as Dreyfuss’s principle centers the human experiences such as real body measurements to be essential in the design process. His methods are considered as standards.
Ray and her husband, Charles Eams also worked in multiple disciplines like furniture, graphic design, textiles, film, architecture. Their design practice is the combination of Charles’s technical skills and Ray’s playful expression. Throughout her career, Ray also developed the graphic design pieces used to promote their design practice and she was the cover designer for the Arts and Architecture journal. Their skillsets are the perfect example of a successful design that should be developed in both functions and forms.
Ladislav Sutnar is known as a visionary in information design. Sutnar’s philosophy to design is to understand the viewer’s perspective. He broke down the design process to the basic visual elements of color, form, symbols, and iconography in order to maximize the user’s efficiency. He created the easy-understanding navigating system that interaction designers continue building today.Karl Gerstner is best known for his grid system- a rule set defined the layout that helps the designer to organize the websites. Although it is a set of rules, it frees the designers from the limitation of the functional layout to creating complex and flexible designs. Even before the responsive web designs that we have today, his design methods had anticipated it and built the foundations.
These mid-century designers contributed to the human-centered, functions-and-forms celebrated interaction design that we known today.
I agree that having multiple skillsets help us when we think about human-centered interactions with the products we design for.
it is interesting to learn that the idea of interdisciplinary has great influences on those designers, which evolves to human-centered designs in modern days.