028. Jacqueline Casey: Shaping the MIT Style (w/ Michael Bierut)

Summary

Women Designers You Should Know: Episode 028 - Jacqueline Casey: Shaping the MIT Style (w/ Michael Bierut)

Release Date: December 17, 2024

Introduction

In Episode 028 of Women Designers You Should Know, host Amber Asay delves into the life and legacy of Jacqueline Casey, a pioneering modernist who revolutionized graphic design at MIT. Joined by esteemed designer Michael Beirut from Pentagram, the episode explores Casey's innovative approaches, her challenges, and the enduring impact of her work on the design world.

Guest Introduction: Michael Beirut

Amber begins by introducing Michael Beirut, highlighting his long-standing partnership at Pentagram since 1990 (“[02:27] Michael Beirut: A while, right, since 1990. So that's 33, 34 years.”). Beirut shares insights into Pentagram's evolution, emphasizing the firm's tradition of inclusivity and the gradual increase in female partners. He discusses his advocacy for diversity in design, noting, “[05:27] Michael Beirut: I think just promoting interesting, diverse people... it just makes the world more interesting, I think.”

Career Beginnings and Influences

Beirut recounts his early career at Bignelli Associates (Vignelli Associates), under the mentorship of Massimo and Lela Vignelli. He describes Lela as the practical force behind the creative endeavors, stating, “[06:56] Michael Beirut:... Layla was the person that kept that office alive as long as it was.” Beirut contrasts Massimo’s boundless creativity with Lela’s discipline, highlighting the balance that influenced his own professional growth.

Transition to Teaching: Yale and Beyond

Beirut reflects on his three-decade teaching career at Yale, where he learned valuable lessons from his students. He emphasizes the importance of embracing diverse design philosophies, stating, “[10:23] Michael Beirut:… people whose work I had trouble understanding… it means that it was just simply a different way of thinking about solving a particular problem.”

Jacqueline Casey: A Modernist Trailblazer

The conversation shifts focus to Jacqueline Casey, with Beirut elucidating her distinctive approach to the Swiss and International Style. He notes, “[13:26] Michael Beirut:... her work had a little more lightness of touch, a little bit more joy. It had a little bit less seriousness, had a kind of heartbeat to it, had soul to it.”

Beirut praises Casey’s ability to infuse emotion into a technically rigorous style, allowing her designs to resonate deeply with viewers. He describes her work at MIT as making "Helvetica dance or laugh or sing" (“[14:36] Michael Beirut:… she was able to make Helvetica dance or laugh or sing in a way”).

Casey's Early Life and Education

Amber provides a background on Casey, born in 1927 in Quincy, Massachusetts, who faced discouragement from her parents regarding her artistic aspirations. Despite initial setbacks, Casey pursued her passion, graduating from Mass Art in 1945 with a major in fashion, design, and illustration.

Beirut adds, “[21:01] Michael Beirut:… Designers should be familiar with economics, too.” highlighting how Casey's diverse educational background contributed to her holistic approach to design.

Influence at MIT and the MIT Style

Casey’s tenure at MIT marked a transformative period for the institution’s graphic design, dubbed the "MIT style." Beirut explains how Casey, along with colleagues like Dietmar Winkler and Ralph Coburn, integrated European modernist principles with a unique American sensibility.

He elaborates, “[23:49] Michael Beirut:… MIT was nourishing her and that what she brought back to MIT was refracted back to them in terms of humanity.”

Signature Posters and Design Philosophy

Several of Casey’s posters are analyzed, showcasing her mastery in balancing visual appeal with functional messaging. Amber discusses specific posters, such as the Intimate Architecture Contemporary Clothing Design poster, highlighting its meticulous alignment and emotional resonance.

Beirut shares a favorite poster, praising its subtle integration of type and image: “[31:45] Michael Beirut:… The catalog was photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe. My concept was not just to add the type, but to incorporate it gently by making it small and following the structure suggested by the folds of the dress.”

Another notable work discussed is the American Women in Science and Engineering Symposium poster, where Casey creatively duplicates the female symbol to evoke unity and collective strength.

Leadership and Legacy

Casey’s leadership as the director of MIT’s Office of Publications (later Design Services) is lauded for fostering an environment where art and design were integral to education. Beirut shares insights from Dietmar Winkler, who admired Casey’s vision and ability to blend creativity with institutional needs.

He reflects on her enduring legacy: “[40:40] Michael Beirut:… her work has endured, has that sort of power. And it has that power because it has the lifeblood of Jackie Casey moving through it.”

Conclusion: Celebrating Casey's Impact

As the episode concludes, Beirut emphasizes the profound influence Casey had on both her contemporaries and future generations of designers. Amber echoes this sentiment, underscoring the importance of recognizing Casey's contributions to democratizing quality design and infusing it with humanity.

A poignant quote from Muriel Cooper is highlighted: “the spirit of MIT nurtured her work, and in turn, her work nurtured the humanity of MIT,” encapsulating the reciprocal relationship between Casey and the institution she helped transform.

Key Quotes

• “[02:27] Michael Beirut: A while, right, since 1990. So that's 33, 34 years.”
• “[05:27] Michael Beirut: I think just promoting interesting, diverse people... it just makes the world more interesting, I think.”
• “[14:36] Michael Beirut:… she was able to make Helvetica dance or laugh or sing in a way.”
• “[21:01] Michael Beirut:… Designers should be familiar with economics, too.”
• “[31:45] Michael Beirut:… The catalog was photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe. My concept was not just to add the type, but to incorporate it gently by making it small and following the structure suggested by the folds of the dress.”
• “[40:40] Michael Beirut:… her work has endured, has that sort of power. And it has that power because it has the lifeblood of Jackie Casey moving through it.”

Final Thoughts

This episode of Women Designers You Should Know offers a comprehensive exploration of Jacqueline Casey's pivotal role in shaping the MIT style and her broader contributions to modernist graphic design. Through the expert insights of Michael Beirut, listeners gain a deeper appreciation for Casey's artistic vision, leadership, and the lasting legacy she left on the design landscape.

Listen Now

For a detailed journey through Jacqueline Casey’s innovative designs and the mentorship of Michael Beirut, tune into Episode 028 of Women Designers You Should Know.

Transcript

[Amber A.C.]

Hello, and welcome to Women Designers. You should know, I'm your host, Amber A.C. and this is the podcast where the icons of design share how women have inspired them. Today, we're diving into the life and legacy of Jacqueline Casey, a modernist trailblazer who transformed graphic design at MIT with her bold, intelligent posters and innovative leadership. I'm joined by the incredible Michael Beirut from Pentagram, whose insights into design and admiration for Jacqueline Casey will bring her story to life in new ways. So grab a cup of coffee and settle in. This is going to be an inspiring journey through one of design's hidden legends. Oh, and one more thing before we begin. I'm so excited to share something with all of you. So for the past five months, I've been working with a couple of incredible songwriter and music producer friends to create a brand new theme song for the podcast. And it's not just a theme song. It's a celebration of the incredible women we honor here. And I can't wait for you to hear it. So, without further ado, hit it.

[Michael Beirut]

Breaking boundaries, building a better world.

[Amber A.C.]

Women designers, you should know. Women designers, you should know. You should know. Women desires, you should know. Hi, Michael. Welcome to the podcast.

[Michael Beirut]

Hi, Amber. Pleasure to be here.

[Amber A.C.]

I'm so excited to talk about all things Jacqueline Casey. In fact, you are the one who chose to speak on her today and know a lot about her. So I'm really excited to hear your take on everything and all of her work. But before we talk about Jacqueline Casey, I really wanted to dive into your career and of course, being at Pentagram, which has long been a beacon for excellence in design. And you've been a partner there for how long?

[Michael Beirut]

A while, right, since 1990. So that's 33, 34 years.

[Amber A.C.]

Wow, that is so impressive.

[Michael Beirut]

Yeah.

[Amber A.C.]

And there's been a notable shift toward greater inclusivity with more women joining as partners. And I was starting to pick up on seeing and hearing about you. And when I interviewed Georgia Lupi and hearing more about you being an advocate for women in design, how involved have you been in championing these women's names for consideration? What's something about the process of selecting new partners, especially women, that you think other organizations can learn from?

[Michael Beirut]

Thanks for categorizing me as a champion for women in design. I'm sure I'm not even among old white guys. The first on that list, Pentagram was founded in 72. It was already well established by the time I joined 18 years later in 1990. And the founders were all five white guys. Right. At a Time where no one would have thought twice about that. It stayed that way for many years. Eventually, when it expanded into the United States, to New York and then to San Francisco, the San Francisco office had the first woman partner, who was Linda Heinrichs in the 80s. And so Linda, technically was the first woman partner. The first woman partner in New York was Paula Scherr, who joined at basically the same time that I did.

[Amber A.C.]

Okay.

[Michael Beirut]

And Pentagram's always had this interesting tradition of growing in a way that very few collective professional services firms that I know of have grown. A lot of times it's considered ideal to grow from within. For whatever reason. The sixth partner that joined Pentagram came from the outside. So did the seventh one. And this idea of the firm staying more vital and engaged by pulling in people from the outside was always much more compelling than pulling them from the inside. In a way. Right. I think partly one of the reasons that I was conscious of what was exciting about expanding the nature of who was represented in the partnership may have had something to do with the fact that when I joined, it was alongside Paula. And she and I have stayed really good friends, like brother and sister in our work relationship. If not.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah, I love that.

[Michael Beirut]

If not more than that. She was always very conscious and very articulate about the challenges that women face in design. At the same time, just a passionate advocate, just of good designers, no matter who they were. I learned a lot from her in terms of her advocacy for the people that both worked for her and the people that were in her classes that she taught at sva, as I would come to teach later on at Yale and have my own team at Pentagram. You know, when I joined, I was the newest and youngest partner, basically. And now I'm one of the oldest partners there, which means that everyone that's come in since sort of effectively has changed the firm with their own point of view. And so I think as we've gone along, we've had this ever broader mixture of partners joining with different partners with different backgrounds coming in. So I think it's like anything else. It will take a while to achieve full 51 to 49% parity, reflecting the general population. But one of the things that I started doing 10 years or so ago, if someone asked me to be in a podcast or someone would ask me to speak on a program, I would say, I think you got the white guy part covered already. And I actually, I started making these lists and saying, if you're looking for people who are neither old nor male nor white, here are some People you might consider. So I think just promoting interesting, diverse people, whether they work for you, whether they work with you, whether they teach side by side with you, or function as clients, whoever they are, it just makes the world more interesting, I think.

[Amber A.C.]

You started out at Bignelli Associates, correct?

[Michael Beirut]

Yeah.

[Amber A.C.]

And I wanted to talk through that a little bit. You were under the legendary Massimo and Lela, and your career is full of milestones that designers can only dream of. So with your firsthand experience, I'd love to know your insight into Lela's involvement at the firm. We covered her on the podcast with Georgia Lupi. And knowing your firsthand experience, I would love to know what you learned from her and what it was like.

[Michael Beirut]

That was my first job out of school. I started working for Vignelli Associates, like, literally a week or two after I graduated. And I just felt like I adopted them as a surrogate mother and father in the rough and tumble world of 1980s New York. And not only that, but, like, just learned a lot from both of them. I learned a lot of things from Osmo, but everything I learned about being a successful designer, I think I learned from Layla. She was a very canny, very practical, very good businesswoman, was also a very good designer, had incredible taste, could actually come out of a meeting and be able to kind of almost intuitively understand what the challenge was and be able to translate that into actionable design activity. Massimo, I think, was very much the kind of designer who just woke up every morning with so many ideas ready to burst out, that if you happen to be the first person through the door, you would get the first five ideas that he had that morning. And then he'd say, wait a second. What's your name again? And what is it? Why are you here? And so Layla would be the one who would figure out a way. So, you know, Masmo, you can't. We have to narrow this down or we can't do that, or this can only go so far. Don't you remember that what they really need is this? I remember Mossimo used to say, you know, in our partnership, I'm the engine and Layla's the brakes. And it's sort of like if you hear that, you think the engine is the cool part, right? That's propulsive and full of energy and driving forward. And the brakes is about risk aversion and caution and holding back, somehow withholding. And then I remembered what my driving teacher always said is, you don't die in a car accident because the engine doesn't start. You Die because the brakes fail. With that metaphor, Layla was the person that kept that office alive as long as it was. It was really remarkable. I was ever afraid of Massimo, but I was, like, afraid of Layla. She was, like, very intimidating. She was so glamorous in a way that. No wow. And this is, like, through the eyes of a Ohio kid who's in his 20s. But still, she was a really memorable figure. To Massimo's credit, he always was really deferential to her. And then in her later years, she got fairly advanced Alzheimer's, and they would travel together, and he was just so unbelievably solicitous to her and would always take pains to include her and to try to, like, make sure that she was participating in a way that would have gone against your assumption of what someone like that would be like. Someone like Massimo would be like, where you just assume there's such a charismatic personality that any inconvenience would just be just that. And it was. Nothing of the case was true with him and Layla to the very end.

[Amber A.C.]

Great. I love hearing all those stories. Thank you for sharing all of that. I also wanted to touch on your time at Yale, too. You've been a teacher for over 30 years, shaping the minds of the next generation of designers while also at the top of your field with clients like Saks Fifth Avenue and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. I don't know how you do it all, but I want to know of your time at Yale. What's one lesson you've learned from your students that has shifted the way you approach your work?

[Michael Beirut]

I want to qualify my answer by saying, I don't consider myself as committed a teacher, even as much as Paula is and many of my partners. I figured out early on that I didn't quite have the stamina to show up day after day and be side by side with each student. But the one thing I did realize was, early on is that there just were so many different ways of thinking about design. And in every class, there'd be a few people who, for one reason or another, I would feel like I was perfectly aligned with. At the very beginning, I found I would make the mistake of really focusing on them just because it was more fun for me to stay in familiar waters, you know? And then, on the other hand, at the other extreme, would be few people who just. I could not make head or tail of what they were doing, thinking, or saying. They just were. And it took me a moment to kind of realize that not all the people who were aligned with Me were really good. They just happened to play to my comfort zone. And more importantly, the people whose work I had trouble understanding at first, that didn't mean it was bad. It meant that it was just simply a different way of thinking about solving a particular problem. And I sort of learned to separate. This is how I would do it. But explain to me why you would do it that way. That began a process that actually shaped the way that I worked with my team in the office. In a way, probably less and less as I went along, did I look for people who could replicate what I did pretty reliably, which is very much, by the way, the Vignelli mode of operation. You know, he would hire people who basically could very reliably deliver to the Vignelli standard, which was fairly.

[Amber A.C.]

Architecture firm, right?

[Michael Beirut]

Yeah, like an architecture firm, Right. And. And he was trained as an architect, and so was Layla, so it's not surprising they thought that way. But I was always eclectic, and I sort of found it, at the end of the day, more interesting to teach people and hire people who thought different from me in a way, and not all of them did. When I think about the designers who passed through my particular team over the three plus decades I was at Pentagram, some of them have gone on to do work that I think I've heard people say, oh, you can tell they work for Michael Beirut because of the way their work looks. But others could do that, but they had another thing they were interested in that kind of catapulted them into sort of a new kind of territory that I really learned from. And I just would, like, watch with awe. And sometimes all I could do is clap my hands as opposed to say, no, no, that's fine, but now do it my way.

[Amber A.C.]

And, yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, it's basically like saying there are so many different ways to come to a solution, and none of them are necessarily right or wrong. And it just adds more intrigue and interest to the project. And so today we're here to talk about Jacqueline Casey. I'm curious to know if this is, like, the first time someone is hearing about Jacqueline. What would you say is the one thing that defines her or sets her apart?

[Michael Beirut]

I would say that what makes Jacqueline Casey, or people in Newark called her Jackie Jack Casey. Right.

[Amber A.C.]

Okay.

[Michael Beirut]

If you can picture a poster that's really clean looking, that has some great, strong primary colors, or maybe a lot of white type against black. And that typeface is probably Helvetica medium, and there seems to be an underlying grid and the overall organization of the composition is very geometric and resolved. The first thing you might picture, if you're a student of design is classic European modernism. Joseph Miller Brockman or Armand Hoffman or Max Hubert. A whole panoply of European designers who together are credited with developing what we came to think of as the international style and design, or perhaps the Swiss style, as it came to be known because Armen Hoffman was the head of the program at the Kunstkever Schule in Basel, Switzerland, where that was seen as the epicenter of this kind of objective teaching that was based on modular grids and sans serif typography.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah. As I was researching this, I also think that it could be comparable to Bauhaus. Like it's the Bauhaus for graphic design.

[Michael Beirut]

No, Absolutely. And it had the same, interestingly enough, idealism at its birth. The Bauhaus wasn't about minimalism or severity. It was about democratizing the accessibility of quality design for everyone. What's interesting about Jackie Casey's work, and I remember the first time I saw it, was there are a couple of figures that get credited with introducing that aesthetic to the United States. Massimo Vignelli being one of them. His firm Unimark, being the people who brought you the signage system for the New York City subway network, which is all in black and white, sans serif typography. Or Rudy de Herrick, who did hundreds of book covers, album covers, and then identities using Helvetica and geometry. A lot of different kind of guys, mostly based in New York, some in Chicago, a few in California, but definitely a man's world of wielding Helvetica. And then up in Boston, in Cambridge specifically, there were these people that were doing something that kind of had that same feeling, but I always thought it had a little bit more lightness of touch, a little bit more joy. It had a little bit less seriousness, had a kind of heartbeat to it, had soul to it, in a way. And if you see posters Jacqueline Casey designed for MIT while she was working there in their office of publications, from a distance, they're indistinguishable from posters that her peers might have been designing in Basel or for corporations down in New York. But they had a joy to them. And I remember seeing that work come out of MIT and thinking, this is the way you can make Helvetica dance or laugh or sing in a way, you know? And I like Helvetica. It's not like I was sort of like, don't make me use that horrible, sterile typeface. I like It. But then to see somebody, Jackie Casey use it was just like different in kind. You know, if you want to be inspired by Jackie Casey, keep in mind that she was a member of an in house team at a nonprofit institution. Right. And how many people listening to this are part of comms or graphic design or marketing teams, nonprofit institutions, and think, if only I work somewhere really cool. Right?

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah.

[Michael Beirut]

And you can say, oh, yeah, but MIT is cool, right? MIT is. You know, you could go up the street to Harvard Square and drop in at Harvard, see what they were doing there, cross the river, go to BU and see what they were doing there. Most of these universities were not doing things that looked progressive. They were doing things that looked solemn and like, we are a university.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah.

[Michael Beirut]

Instead, MIT was just on fire with all this stuff. And it was instigated by your previous subject, Muriel Cooper. But also Jackie had Dietmar Winkler, Ralph Coburn, other designers she's working side by side with. And they just were, on the face of it, just grinding out assignments from, you know, someone would come and say, I need a poster for the choir concert and it can't cost more than this and it has to be done by Wednesday. We all get that request. And then you think, oh, you know, why doesn't someone give me a cool thing to work on? It's a miracle what she was able to do.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah. There's two things that you pointed out that I really wanted to emphasize is the fact that she brought soul to the international typographic style, which is really saying something, and the fact that she made the most out of every project. She put so much passion into each one. And hearing stories about how she would really be in her own space coming up with those solutions and quietly working away at it. And everyone just like leaving her to her, you know, design moment. And then she'd come up with these brilliant solutions. And so thinking about Mossimo, really popularizing the international style, it's interesting because Jackie's technically doing it before Massimo and so was on the other side of the country, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, who also brought a lot of soul to it, like Jackie did, which was interesting. But they were both women and so they at the time, not a whole lot of people were seeing that or noticing it as much as, of course, Massimo working on American Airlines and New York Subway and all of these like highly seen things. But we never really give a whole lot of credit to Jackie or Barbara Bobby for like really working through that a lot too.

[Michael Beirut]

Yeah. And it's funny you mentioned Barbara Selbacher Solomon. Because I think she very much had the same set of really interesting impulses at work there. Right. What made Massimo's work interesting was that it was the Italian side of him that brought in kind of the passion and the daring and the shifts of scale and everything. It wasn't just simply a plug and play sort of formula to think, oh, the Swiss style is sort of the given. But then if you're a woman, you can bring something to it. If you're Italian, you can bring something to it. I agree it's like comically and unfairly reductive. But I do think it's also a commentary on the idea that there are design styles, there are design dogmas, there are design principles. You can put whatever kind of name you want onto a mode of operation you could have as a designer. But what makes it come to life is what you're able personally to bring to it.

[Amber A.C.]

So just to talk a little bit about her early life going way back, she was born in 1927 in Quincy, Massachusetts. So she didn't go far from home. She grew up in a working class household. And her parents, interestingly enough, discouraged her interest in art. They really wanted her to get into bookkeeping or administrative work. They wanted to set her up for a successful career because they were struggling to make ends meet. And she ended up going to a high school that actually had majors. You had to select a major at this high school. It was a girls high school, and it was setting up these women for getting into a career. After high school, she majored in bookkeeping and administrative work because that's what her parents wanted. Even though she really wanted to major in art in high school.

[Michael Beirut]

I have a quote from her on that, actually. She says, when I was in high school and time came to specialize my junior year, I wanted to continue in art, but I was told that I had to take bookkeeping. But then she said, even this did me some good. Designers should be familiar with economics, too. And I think one of the things that made her a strong designer in the environment at MIT was the fact that she always understood that there was different interesting subject matters to engage with. And I think that if she use her own words, she was thwarted initially from going into art, but eventually found her way back into it.

[Amber A.C.]

And so she ended up going to mass art in 1945, majoring in fashion, design and illustration. You know, she's really trying to look for something to do creatively. And it was while she was at Mass Art that she met Muriel Cooper. Because they both worked at the college's art supply store, which I thought was interesting. And one quote that I love of Muriel's about this time is that she said, we learned more in the store than we did in school. When the store would close in the afternoon, the students who worked there, about a dozen of us, had the studio to ourselves and our little bin of paints and papers and materials. They would just, like, play artistically in that environment and really learn from each other. I like one thing that Jackie had said is she called it hard edge painting. I don't think I'd ever heard of that term before, but it's a very graphic approach to painting. And I imagine that's what they were doing with all those paints after she graduated. This was right when the war ended and she was struggling with where to land or settle in her career. She was working as a fashion illustrator. She worked in interior design for a few months and in advertising too, and just felt uninspired. So she traveled to clear her head for three months to Europe and then came back and decided that she really was passionate about art and wanted to really keep pursuing that. Muriel Cooper, her friend from college, was already at MIT and suggested Jackie's name. And I imagine this isn't said anywhere, but I imagine Muriel must have known about Jackie's career struggle and was like, I've always liked her creative mind. I want her to work here. And so with no graphic design background, because Muriel Cooper was who graduated in graphic design from Mass Art, not Jackie. But she saw potential in Jackie and wanted to bring her into MIT and wanted her creative mind to work on things. And of course, really appreciated her friendship. Similar to the Pentagram model of wanting the partners to have this, like, solid camaraderie among them.

[Michael Beirut]

What's interesting about MIT is that for Jackie and Muriel and the other designers, there is that the intellectual world and challenges and stimulation that came out of MIT started providing the inspiration for work that could be design work that would proceed directly from the assignments. You wouldn't have to superimpose art on it. You could actually be stimulated by the subject matter you were given to work on. That's true for, again, if you look across all that work, you see plenty of it in evidence, but I think particularly in Jackie's work.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah, absolutely. And so she was there for a few years. And it was around 1959 that MIT was basically introduced to this Swiss grid system by another female designer, Therese Mal. They had this program where they wanted European designers to come to mit. It was a very progressive program because they wanted their designers to learn from the European designers and to learn these progressive design methodologies. And so that's where Therese came into play, is she comes with the very heart of the Swiss style, learning directly from Armand Hoffman, even alongside him in some cases. And having been doing this for several years professionally, and then going to MIT and showing them how to set up a grid and work within that grid, and that was very groundbreaking for them, and they just really clung onto that.

[Michael Beirut]

Therese Mal is a figure that's very mysterious, actually, because she died very young, in her late 20s, she was a suicide. And I think Elizabeth Resnick did a lot of research trying to, like, really see what her work was. She's very accomplished designer for someone that young. She had already had a fairly substantial career, seemingly at the pharmaceutical company SI Bagi that was, like, probably in Switzerland, was the greatest commercial expression of that aesthetic. And I sort of imagine her as being this John the Baptist figure who's, you know, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to be an exchange student at this nerdy Institute of Technology and probably has this leather portfolio, opens it up and it's just filled with all this work that wouldn't have necessarily been in wide circulation in the United States. MIT was already a fairly sophisticated place in terms of their knowledge of things that were happening in Europe. But still, it's kind of remarkable how much credit she was given for introducing everyone there to the basic precepts of European modernism as expressed through international style graphic design.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah. And Jackie Casey was there with her colleague Ralph Coburn, who she pulled into MIT as well. And they're both just deeply influenced by Therese Mal's design rigor and the European training. And then this becomes a major turning point for the Office of Publications and MIT as a whole, and turned into what was later called the MIT style. So very groundbreaking moment here. And, in fact, that reminds me of the work that you've worked on for mit. You've done quite a bit of rebranding for them, like the MIT Media Lab and the MIT Museum, to name a few, among others. And you did this fully aware of their history and even rooting the design in that history. Why do you think it's so impactful or even important that an institution like this cared so much about design?

[Michael Beirut]

I never quite thought of this way until this conversation, Amber. But there's a kind of playfulness there, that sort of the kind of perfect SAT score, class valedictorian profile that you expect their admitted students would have. They're still capable of doing elaborate pranks Every year of, like, doing crazy hacks that they've done and things. There's this book that I have that I keep relying on, which is this catalog to a posthumous exhibition of Jackie's work that I think was prepared for the most part when she was still alive, but I think ends up being the best survey ever worked. I tried to order this three times, and the first two times I ordered it, and I kept getting this, like, funny other book from mit, which is a catalog of different pranks that different graduating classes had played. Then I complained about it to someone at mit and they said, oh, you've just been pranked yourself, because someone went in and hacked the ISBN numbers and fix it. So I finally had to get this. I had to go around the normal channels to get a copy of that because every time I tried to do it through a books or Amazon, I just was coming up. So there's a kind of playfulness there that I think crossed with a commitment to modernity and looking to the future. They care about tradition as much as any other great institution of higher learning in the United States or anywhere. But they also really know that it's a place where they invent things that kind of create a new way of looking at the future. Me and one of my designers, Johnny Sykov, worked on the work for the MIT Museum. Our client there, Martha Davis, for Celebratory Gifts, gave us each a copy of a vintage piece of graphic design for those years. And he got the Jackie Casey one. I got a Ralph Coburn one.

[Amber A.C.]

Okay.

[Michael Beirut]

The Ralph Coburn one I got is one I really, really, really like. And I think.

[Amber A.C.]

Cool. Is it framed somewhere?

[Michael Beirut]

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely framed. Yeah. But these things are really hard to get because they weren't, like, museum quality posters, you know, The Coburn I've got is a weekend jazz festival. Right. And Knocked it Out is probably job number 37. And.

[Amber A.C.]

And there. Were they all screen printed?

[Michael Beirut]

I'm not positive. I think some were screen printed. Some of them may have been just regular offset printed.

[Amber A.C.]

Speaking of that poster book, it's so cool that you have that because it's not available anywhere. There aren't really any other books on Jacqueline Casey, and so there's only so many, like, photos or imagery available online of her posters. Probably half of what might be cataloged in that book, too. I want to talk through her posters a little bit. She had this way, of course, like we were saying, taking the Swiss style and putting her own spin on it, and she was creating these visual Metaphors and these riddles within her work. She really wanted to pull the viewer in and to figure it out and then read the small text which gave them the rest of the information. Information to come to an event. One of the things that she said was, 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. For example, there's one where it's set vertically and the rag of the type follows basically and mirrors the rag of a fabric from a dress. Yes, that one. Maybe you're on the same page, but your eye is meant to go to that edge where those are dancing with each other and then start reading the small text. And it's very small text. All of her posters are. I don't know, is that set in eight point maybe, or. I'm just guessing here, but it's just like really small body copy.

[Michael Beirut]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Amber A.C.]

Compared to these larger visuals that I would assume as people are walking around campus, the visual gets them in first and then they go and then read the small stuff.

[Michael Beirut]

Yep, yep. I found that fast. Cause that's my favorite poster.

[Amber A.C.]

Oh, really?

[Michael Beirut]

Yeah, yeah. It's so responsive to the respect she had to material. And here's her quote about that poster, by the way. It was for an exhibition called Intimate Architecture Contemporary Clothing Design.

[Amber A.C.]

Okay.

[Michael Beirut]

And the catalog was photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe, of all people. So this is 1982, when Mapplethorpe was still available to work as a commercial photographer. But he says Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs for this catalog was superb in designing its covers. I toyed with the notions of covering, uncovering, discovering. What lovely word play there.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah.

[Michael Beirut]

For the poster, the issue was to place the type without interfering with meticulously crafted and beautiful image. My concept was not just to add the type, but to incorporate it gently by making it small and following the structure suggested by the folds of the dress, it aligns perfectly with the width of the bottom of the hem. And then the natural rag of the typography just sort of like echoes the pleats in the dress, just as you described it. Amber so beautifully. And what's interesting is that unlike so much of her work, which has real dynamic changes of scale, a lot of times she would use just a large typography to bring you in and then pay it off with the small type with the messaging on it. And in this case, she sort of realized that the image was what she needed to lead with and everything had to defer to that. And I think she might be disconcerted to have that named as our favorite because there's, in a way, there's very little design going on. Like, there's another one that I marked here, which I would say is probably on my team, was sort of like the most ripped off Jackie Casey idea, which is this 1974 open house poster she did. Oh, yeah, this is like itsy bitsy type on it somewhere. It's done in a stencil typeface. And the O in open and the O in house, each kind of are missing half. And so they open up to kind of look like something's been open or unlocked or turned on, a hinge or something. And so it's not literal at all, but yet it's very evocative. And I've literally said the words. We can't keep ripping off that Jackie Casey open house poster. Stop it. Because it just is like two. It's like.

[Amber A.C.]

It's so good.

[Michael Beirut]

Yeah, it's so good.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah. And I love her attention to detail in that one. Like, she's lining up the letter forms with each other that, like, it's breaking the grid in that moment because she really wants the. What was it like, the seven to line up with the E or something like that.

[Michael Beirut]

Yeah, the seven lines up with the E, the MIT at the top, the way that M lines up with the st. All that is lining up perfectly. And that would be the difference between real crafts people who really cared about it, like they did at mit, and that Jacqueline Casey did. She describes her goals for the poster. It does its job. Even if those things aren't lined up perfectly, the big thing attracts the attention of the small type, but still just to get all that exactly right, you know? And so I think they found in the international style graphic language the beauty of that kind of precision and the elegance of that kind of rigor. And mathematicians and scientists will use words like beauty and elegance to describe solutions, geometric proofs or equations, or theoretical descriptions of how matter interacts. They'll use the same language that art critics use to describe paintings or that you and I would use to describe design. And so I think they found that corollary in the work they were doing, and that's what makes it so exciting, I think.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah, I feel like she understood her audience too, with all the MIT folks, and they'd be intrigued by this, too. Another poster that I really liked, and for the purpose of this podcast, is the American Women in Science and Engineering Symposium. And it's taking the female symbol and duplicating it in red and blue. And it feels like a collective of women coming together.

[Michael Beirut]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Amber A.C.]

I wonder if she was like the first one to really personify that symbol in a way that felt like a lot of women coming together. There's like a duplication happening where maybe it's sound waves in a sense, where it feels like it's getting bigger. And hearing these women at a symposium and voices heard and things like that too.

[Michael Beirut]

Yeah, that's really early for her. A lot of the ones we're looking at are like the mapplethorpe dress, that's 82.

[Amber A.C.]

Okay.

[Michael Beirut]

And then open house. That's early 70s. Yeah. 74. And then that one is 64. Really early. What she was able to bring to that poster was this sort of wit in. Oh, it looks like two women joining hands in solidarity. You can interpret all these different ways. You can go through lots of European modernism and it's faultless in terms of its formal execution, but it really shies away from. In a few instances, there are visuals, metaphors. But I think that wasn't how they thought quite as much. And so I think that combination of the rigor of the modernist technical approach combined with the American proclivity for storytelling and emotion leads someplace like that very early poster for her.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah, that's a good call out. And so then she did become the director of the Office of Publications, which later renamed to Design Services. And she was overseeing campus wide design and people are bringing all of these events from different departments to the team kind of a thing. That was when she also brought in Dietmar Winkler, or is it Winkler in German. And so he was a German trained designer who also contributed to this European design style. And she saw that in his work and brought him into. And a quote from him, he said that Jackie cultivated a publications office where art and design were integral to the educational process. She craved privacy during creative spurts, but led with vision and imagination. And he was the one who designed and edited that posters book that you have, which I thought that was a really great like full circle moment, is he really admired her, really valued the work that she did and her leadership. It was obvious in the fact that he did that and has helped with telling her story even more. So for us to know all these.

[Michael Beirut]

Details, it's interesting because a lot of the figures that we think of, even looking at the list of people that you've been addressing in your work here, whether it's someone like Barbara Solomon or. Have you done Tomoko Miho yet?

[Amber A.C.]

No, but she's on My list, yeah, very funny.

[Michael Beirut]

Again, in that same aesthetic and again, doing things that have such verve to it. They need to get out on their own and to find their own kind of podiums to stand on to draw the spotlight. And one of the things that's interesting about a figure like Jackie Casey is that she, to the very end, was very much a institutional designer. You know, she was working as part of a team and crediting the work that she did to were collaborators, I think, to an unusual degree in a way that I find really inspirational, actually. And they just had to keep turning it out, you know. And a quote from her is, in my early days at mit, a designer working on, say, summer session materials would interview faculty and they'd get a mini course in a subject like radioisotopes from the professor in charge. There was an opportunity to learn something new every day. So I think you sort of can sense her interest in just the joy of the subject matter really came to life when she was, like, trying, whether it was for an art exhibition or for a very dry, scientific subject, she was able to find somewhere to locate her passion.

[Amber A.C.]

Yeah. Just to close out her story, she did die from cancer in 1992, and she was, you know, working all the way up until three years prior to that. And her legacy lives on. I mean, her posters are at the collections of MoMA and the library of Congress and the Cooper Hewitt. And I think her name could be even bigger than it is now. But it is great to see archives of her work and that there's people really admiring her work to this day. One quote that I really wanted to call out or end on is going back to Muriel Cooper. She eulogized her, saying the spirit of MIT nurtured her work, and in turn, her work nurtured the humanity of mit. And so what a beautiful relationship between her and MIT and how they really just fed off of each other. And I think that's such a beautiful way to sum up her work. But I'd love to know from you, as we close this out, what inspires you the most about what she accomplished?

[Michael Beirut]

She was clearly both, you know, a very thoughtful, articulate person, but surrounded by people who she had influenced and who, in turn, really admired her for that influence. Right. What Muriel Cooper locates in Casey's work is the fact that MIT was, like, nourishing her and that what she brought back to MIT was refracted back to them in terms of humanity. And I think that's the best thing any designer can do. All of us are faced with deadlines or budgets that seem challenging, all of us are faced with briefs that seem very dry and don't seem inherently exciting or interesting. When you look at her work over and over again, she finds herself in that situation, and it's not like she kind of powers through it through sheer force of will, grits her teeth and says, I can do this. You can feel her loving the challenge. She's genuinely interested. If each of us could, starting tomorrow, vow to have that sort of commitment to both the material that we're working with, the people for whom we're doing it, and the people who will get to experience it immediately, she might be as surprised as anyone to know that 32 years later, we're talking about the work in this book that was done to commemorate. Probably would seem like a fairly nice little show for a relatively obscure designer who had been doing a body of work for a very small audience on one little canvas for a school outside of Boston. And yet the work has endured, has that sort of power. And it has that power because. Because it has the lifeblood of Jackie Casey moving through it. And we each can put that into our work as well.

[Amber A.C.]

I love that. That's so beautiful. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been so great to hear your opinion and expertise on all of this.

[Michael Beirut]

And you can tell that could go on like this forever. So it was fun for me. And thank you for many more topics too. Thank you so much.

[Amber A.C.]

Thank you for joining us on Women Designers yous should know where we uncover the story of trailblazing women who've shaped the design world. Jacqueline Casey's work reminds us that great design transcends function. It can unify institutions, inspire generations, and create lasting legacies. Michael, thank you for sharing your thoughts and helping us honor her incredible contributions. And as always, let's redesign history by celebrating women. See you next time.