Henry Dreyfuss: Groundbreaking UI Designer Part Two
This is the second in a two-part series on designer Henry Dreyfuss. Read part one.
World War II and a Move to California
Henry Dreyfuss, Raymond Loewy, and Walter Dorwin Teague designed a series of strategy rooms for the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff at the beginning of World War II. Dreyfuss’s contribution was “four 13-foot rotating globes, one each for Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and the Joint Chiefs” (1).
In February 1944, when The Society of Industrial Designers (SID) was founded Walter Dorwin Teague was its first president, and Dreyfuss served as the organization’s first vice-president. After the War, Dreyfuss moved his family to Pasadena, California, and “opened a second office near his home” (2). In 1946, William F. H. Purcell and Robert Hose became partners in the firm. (1)
Henry Dreyfuss, SS Constitution for American Export Lines (1950). Image source.
In the early 1950s, Dreyfuss designed two steamships, SS Independence and SS Constitution for American Export Lines. (3) For these ships, he developed aluminum deck chairs to replace the heavier wooden deck chairs. (5) Although his firm had done consulting work for Honeywell since the late 1930s, it wasn’t until 1953, Dreyfuss designed the most important product for that firm, the round Honeywell thermostat, “which allowed it to fit cleanly on a wall whether it was askew or not, unlike rectangular ones which frequently appeared crooked”(4).
Henry Dreyfuss, Thermostat for Honeywell (1953). Image source.
During this time Dreyfuss continued working with Bell Laboratories. “In 1949 Dreyfuss updated Bell’s Model 300 telephone with the model 500, which would become the first phone to be offered in a color other than black beginning in 1954. It would ultimately go on to be the most popular phone ever made”(4). An updated version of the wall telephone and the Princess phone were introduced during this decade.
Henry Dreyfuss, Bell Laboratories Model 500 telephone (1949). Image source.
The 1950s also saw Dreyfuss publish his seminal design book, Designing for People. “The book illustrated his ethical and aesthetic principles, [and] included design case studies, many anecdotes” (5), along with anthropometric charts. A second book dealing with ergonomics, The Measure of Man, was published in 1960. (1)
Dreyfuss’s Late Career
During the 1960s Henry Dreyfuss Associates clients included American Safety Razor Company and Polaroid Land Company, which introduced his design for the model 100 camera in 1963. Also during this time, his firm was responsible for the rebranding of American Airlines and continued to collaborate with its long-time client Deere & Company designing four new tractor models during the decade. (3)
Image source.
In 1965 several professional design organizations, including The Society of Industrial Designers, merged to form the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). Dreyfuss was its first president. (7)
Henry Dreyfuss retired from the design firm that bore his name in 1969, but remained working “with top management of several clients to analyze and improve their contact with customers”(3). In 1972 Dreyfuss, along with his wife Doris, worked on Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols, a reference guide “of over 20,000 symbols [that] continues to provide a standard for industrial designers around the world”(4).
Henry Dreyfuss, Cover pages for Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols, McGraw Hil Publishers (1972). Image source.
The Tragic Deaths of Henry and Doris Dreyfuss
In 1972 Henry and Doris Dreyfuss had been happily married for 42 years, but Doris was suffering from terminal cancer. At one point the pain became too much for Doris to bear. On October 5 of that year, the Dreyfusses went into the garage of their home at “500 Columbia Street in South Pasadena, California”(3), got into their car, and turned on the engine. “Within a few minutes they both died. They had lived their life together and ended it together”(7). “Authorities reported the cause of death as carbon monoxide poisoning”(3). The couple was survived by their son and two daughters.
Henry Dreyfuss Associates
The firm that Henry Dreyfuss founded in 1929, continued as Henry Dreyfuss Associates for over four decades after his death”(4). “After Dreyfuss’s retirement, Donald M. Genaro served as president of the company until 1994. In the 1970s, Henry Dreyfuss Associates was responsible for designing the “interiors of nuclear-powered Trident missile submarines”(3). In the next decade, the company “added a major new client in Falcon Jet Company”(3), and was averaging about 50 new products a year. (2)
When Genaro stepped down as president in 1994, a team of several partners took control of the firm. During the 1990s a new utility vehicle was designed for long-time client John Deere, and the company designed the interiors of a line of business jets for the Astra Jet company. Projects for AT&T in 1992 included a notebook computer and a smartphone “which featured an onscreen keyboard”(2).
Henry Dreyfuss Associates relocated to Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2004. (3)
The Legacy of Henry Dreyfuss
In 1963, “Henry Dreyfuss became a trustee of Caltech,… though he had been a faculty member of the engineering division for many years, and had annually lectured on industrial design to students in Business Economics”(5).
In 1996 a major retrospective of the work of Henry Dreyfuss appeared at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the same year a book on his work was published. The Industrial Designers Society of America posthumously awarded Dreyfuss the Individual Achievement Award in 2004. (2) The Henry Dreyfuss Archives are located in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
A second retrospective of Dreyfuss’s work was held in 2020 at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. Currently the Cooper-Hewitt celebrates the 50th anniversary of Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols with a special exhibition that runs through Spring 2024.
Henry Dreyfuss’s genius spans product design, graphic design, user interface design, as well as business and marketing. His greatest contribution to design is emphasizing the importance of the utility and usability of a product as well as its style.
References
Industrial Designers Society of America, (2023). Henry Dreyfuss, FIDSA. https://www.idsa.org/profile/henry-dreyfuss/
Uhle, F. (n.d.). Henry Dreyfuss Associates, LLC. https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/henry-dreyfuss-associates-llc
Wikipedia, (24 February, 2023). Henry Dreyfuss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dreyfuss
Futurama, of the city of, designed by Norman Bel Geddes for the General Motors Exhibit at the New York World's Fair in 1939. New York, 1939. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2012645722/.
Dreyfuss, J. (22 October, 1972). Henry and Doris Dreyfuss. https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2944/1/dreyfuss.pdf
Industrial Designers Society of America, (2023). Our Story. https://www.idsa.org/about-idsa/our-story/
Jones, R. A., (7 May, 1997). Our Dreyfuss Affair. La Times Website. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-05-07-me-56286-story.html
2 notes
·
View notes