The MIT Press colophon, designed by Muriel Cooper
This video was created by Pentagram to celebrate Muriel Cooper on the 50th anniversary of her becoming the first art director of the MIT Press.
Cooper, who died in 1994, was an influential designer, researcher, and educator. As the design director of the MIT Press, she created the encyclopedic volume Bauhaus by Hans M. Wingler and the graphically dazzling first edition of Learning from Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. During her four-decade career at MIT, Cooper also served as cofounder of the Visible Language Workshop and cofounder of the MIT Media Lab. She was also Associate Professor of Advertising Design at Massachusetts College of Art from 1962 to 1967.
In 2023, the iconic MIT Press colophon, designed by Cooper, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for their permanent collection.
