The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945-1976

PIn February 1956 the president of IBM, Thomas Watson Jr., hired the industrial designer and architect Eliot F. Noyes, charging him with reinventing IBMrsquo;s corporate image, from stationery and curtains to products such as typewriters and computers and to laboratory and administration buildings. What followedmdash;a story told in full for the first time in John Harwoodrsquo;s iThe Interface/imdash;remade IBM in a way that would also transform the relationships between design, computer science, and corporate culture. PIBMrsquo;s program assembled a cast of leading figures in American design#58; Noyes, Charles Eames, Paul Rand, George Nelson, and Edgar Kaufmann Jr. iThe Interface/i offers a detailed account of the key role these designers played in shaping both the computer and the multinational corporation. Harwood describes a surprising inverse effect#58; the influence of computer and corporation on the theory and practice of design. Here we see how, in the period stretching from the ldquo;inventionrdquo; of the computer during World War II to the appearance of the personal computer in the mid-1970s, disciplines once well outside the realm of architectural designmdash;information and management theory, cybernetics, ergonomics, computer sciencemdash;became integral aspects of design.PAs the first critical history of the industrial design of the computer, of Eliot Noyesrsquo;s career, and of some of the most important work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, iThe Interface/i supplies a crucial chapter in the story of architecture and design in postwar Americamdash;and an invaluable perspective on the computer and corporate cultures of today.