Reviews that showed foreign films. He tells us that watching these films over and over was instrumental in form- Victor Margolin ing his sensibility as a title designer. To boost ticket sales, Ferro drew a gigantic female torso, which was placed in front of the theater box office so that cus- tomers had to walk through the woman’s legs to buy Pablo, Directed by Richard Goldewicht (2012; Los Angeles, CA: Shoreline Entertainment) their tickets. It was a success and helped launch Ferro’s career as an artist. He tried his hand at comic Design is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli, Directed books and Stan Lee hired him as an inker, a job at by Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra which he excelled. By 1964, when he designed the (2012; New York, NY: First Run Features). Kubrick titles, he was a partner in an advertising agency with the animator Fred Mogubgub and the Millions of people have seen Pablo Ferro’s film titles comic book artist Lew Schwartz. The Kubrick titles but few know who he is. Among those aware of him launched his career in that genre and he shortly there- as a title designer, even fewer know anything about after set up on his own studio. his personal life. Pablo, a recent documentary, seeks to Pablo is a very positive portrayal of Ferro though redress this. Directed by Richard Goldgewicht, Pablo it’s not clear what role he played in developing the combines animation, live action, home movies, and narrative. Among the people interviewed during the talking heads to give us a picture of Ferro as he once film is his former wife, who speaks fondly of him was and as he is today. but says that he chose a path in the ‘60s that she could In 1964, Ferro designed his first film titles, the not follow. It was a time when he immersed himself ironic opening sequence for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. in drugs and sex. We also learn that Ferro craved a Strangelove. A decade earlier Saul Bass had created the family and that he ended up in business with his two first memorable film titles for Carmen Jones and The children—his son as his partner and his daughter as Man With the Golden Arm, both directed by Otto Prem- his agent. inger. Bass, a graphic designer, went on to work with He passed through a few rough patches and other directors and by the time Ferro entered the field, his finances went up and down like a roller coaster. At Bass had already made title design into an established one point, he was living in his son’s garage but he art form. Others like Steve Frankfurt, Richard Green- seems to have taken all the changes in stride. By the berg, and Kyle Cooper followed Ferro. end of the film, Ferro is again in digs that can accom- Bass on Titles, a documentary made in the late modate all his possessions and we are confident that 1970s, in which Saul Bass presents his most memorable he will continue as a creative artist. titles, might be considered a predecessor to Pablo but There are ample testimonials to Ferro’s talent it is a very different film. Its focus is on the titles and in the film from the likes of actors Jeff Bridges, they are shown in their entirety beginning with the Andy Garcia, Anjelica Huston, Richard Benjamin, and earliest ones and continuing into the late 1960s. In the Robert Downey Sr. Directors and producers with film, Bass simply introduces the title sequences and whom he worked—Jonathan Demme, Norman Jewi- explains a little about how they were made before we son, and Norman Lear—and critics—Leonard Maltin see them. and Steven Heller—also sing his praises. Particularly By contrast, Pablo, is a more ambitious film, touching is the portrayal of his close relationship with especially through its genre-breaking mix of anima- the director Hal Ashby with whom he collaborated on tion and live action. The animated sequences depict a number of films. incidents in Ferro’s life, beginning with his boyhood Richard Goldgewicht’s staccato directing style— in Cuba and continuing through his emigration to the his sudden switches from animation to home movies United States as a youth and up to the present. Ferro to talking heads—is an attempt to capture the spirit had a talent for drawing and displayed it at one of of Ferro’s own directing technique. Amidst the fast his first jobs as an usher in a small New York theater pacing, there are charming moments as when the

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_r_00325 by guest on 29 September 2021 narrator steps back to explain what a film trailer is. way in which they worked together. Trained in Other scenes are less engaging such as the sequence the Italian tradition where architects can and do where Ferro is purchasing a sauna. design anything and everything, they worked in Goldgewicht might have taken a lesson from almost every medium ranging from architecture, Saul Bass, however, and shown more titles in their interiors, and furniture to household products, liturgi- entirety. After all, they are what Ferro is known for cal objects, jewelry, and graphic design. They adhered and someone unfamiliar with his work would have to a strict rationalist aesthetic and consequently their benefitted from greater exposure to them. If nothing products exemplify forms without excess or waste. else, we should have seen the entire Dr. Strangelove One of their design mantras says that if you can’t title sequence to better understand the enormous tal- find something you want, then design it yourself. ent that Ferro brought to his craft. This is especially evident in the men’s clothing line We can also think about Pablo as a visual autobi- that Massimo (who passed away in 2014) designed, ography. This is appropriate given that Ferro which features loose fitting garments with clean lines, expresses himself more strongly in images than especially jackets with-out lapels. words. Where we can imagine someone else writing a A memorable segment of the film describes memoir, we see in this instance Ferro collaborating the Vignellis’ design for the interior of St. Peter’s, a with the director to tell his story in the format he progressive Lutheran church in New York, which is knows best, film. In the end, it works. Pablo does con- known for its social concerns as well as its innovative vey a sense of Ferro’s life beyond his professional Jazz Vespers. The Vignelli’s interior has furnishings accomplishments but it also mixes his achievements that are stark but flexible, enabling multiple sacred sufficiently to leave us in no doubt that he is a master and secular uses of the space. Massimo expresses his of his genre. wish to be interred in the church so he can rest forever The designers Massimo and Lella Vignelli are with the beautiful objects that bear the Vignelli stamp. also portrayed as masters of their genre, but the film This association with beautiful things even after death Design is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli reveals less exemplifies the fact that design for the Vignellis is about their lives than we learn about Pablo Ferro. more than a profession; it is what they live for. We also Whereas Ferro struggled to maintain the talents that see the Vignellis as public figures in a segment that made him a great animator, the Vignellis, both trained covers the opening of the Vignelli Center for Design as architects in Italy, followed a seamless path to New Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology, York, where they established a highly successful where their concern for the education of design stu- design studio, Vignelli Associates. They went first to dents is evident. Chicago, where Massimo became a partner in the Over the years Massimo in particular was out- international multidisciplinary design firm Unimark. spoken about the cultural rather than commercial He and Lella moved to New York to found a Unimark value of design. In a telling segment where he dis- studio, but left Unimark in 1971 to open their own cusses the plastic coffee mug he designed for the studio Vignelli Associates. The film’s directors, Kathy housewares company Heller, Massimo admits that Brew and Robert Guerra, tell us nothing about the the incision in the rim where the handle is attached Unimark years nor do they provide much historical caused coffee to run down the handle when the context in general. Where the corporate identity pro- mug was too full but he locates the problem with the grams for American Airlines and Ford are presented consumer who fills the mug too full, thus lacking the in the film as Vignelli projects, both companies were cultural awareness to honor the design rather than actually Unimark clients for whom Vignelli did much abuse it with careless use. of the work but not all. Though Massimo is the more opinionated of the Nonetheless, the film is a superb showcase two in the film, Lella also gets an opportunity to for the wide range of products that the Vignellis speak about some of her designs, notably her exotic designed, although it would have helped to know jewelry, which includes a necklace that can be twisted more about their design processes, particularly the into numerous shapes as well as the liturgical objects

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_r_00325 by guest on 29 September 2021 she created for the Jewish Museum in New York. view the computer as wholly contemporary, as a mere What we don’t hear about is what it must have been device, and instead recovers its important aesthetic like to work in New York during her early years when past. His rigorous and inspired study traces the most of her colleagues were men. Also eliminated are industrial design of the computer from World War II any debates or discussions about the Vignelli’s through the mid-1970s, focusing on the design designs. Granted that they are beautiful but the program at the International Business Machines designers’ adherence to a strict rationalist approach Corporation (IBM) and specifically on IBM’s consul- did provoke opposition over the years, particularly tant designer Eliot Noyes and his collaborations with in graphic design where Massimo’s vigorous defense Paul Rand, George Nelson, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., of typographic modernism engendered considerable Charles Eames, and others. Through a masterful opposition. use of previously unconsidered archival material, We learn far less in this film about the Vignellis Harwood addresses the full span of design objects than we do about Charles and Ray Eames in the docu- and initiatives at IBM: from the space-age main- mentary Eames: The Architect and the Painter that is also frames like the System/360 to the research-and- distributed by First Run Features. Although the Eames development laboratories in which these machines film discusses details of their complicated personal were first fabricated; from the logos, advertisements, life, it also shows how Charles and Ray worked exhibitions, and multimedia spectacles that promoted together, thus providing a better sense of what each the company to the elaborate plans for the multina- contributed to their mutual projects, more so than one tional’s spread across the globe. All of these practices gets in this film about the Vignellis. The persons inter- naturalized and normalized the computer but also viewed in the Vignelli film—architects Peter Eisen- the corporation. man and Richard Meier, designer Michael Beirut, Harwood’s account aims to historicize and critic Steven Heller, and MoMA design curator Paula theorize, and it is especially compelling in the way it Antonelli among others—are more adulatory than uniquely links seemingly disparate practices through reflective, a tone that is indicative of the film in gen- the notion of “the interface.” Defined by Harwood as eral. Nonetheless, this portrait of Massimo and Lella the “hinge between the world of things and the world Vignelli is an admirable one. They dedicated their of numbers,” the interface functions as the inter- lives to design, fueled by the belief that it can make a active surface between technological object and user; difference, and that is inspiring. it forms the communicational link that ties com- puter and operator together into a human-machine system.1 But the concept of the interface also serves John R. Blakinger as a lens through which to make sense of IBM’s design more generally. As Harwood sees it, layers

of media throughout IBM’s sprawling corporate Tracing the Military-Industrial-Aesthetic Complex apparatus—graphics, curtain walls, machine casings, The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945–1976 by John Harwood (Minneapolis, I/O devices—all operated as interfaces. These media MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); ISBN translated the obdurate materiality of computers 9780816670390, hardback, ISBN 9780816674527, and their exceedingly complex mechanics into paperback; 288 pages, illustrated, hardcover ($34.95). comprehensible information, while simultaneously visualizing the digital codes of information as archi- We are now so adjusted to digital culture—so adapted tecture and images. to the virtual blur of ones and zeros, the pervasive Similarly, Harwood identifies a common orga- abstractions of data and information—that we easily nizational logic subtending IBM’s activities: the need forget the computer’s origins as a thing designed. In to preserve signals against the interference of noise. The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Such a demand is famously articulated in mid-century Design, 1945–1976, John Harwood pressures our his- discourses like information theory and cybernetics torical amnesia. He works against the tendency to and derives from the computer’s electronics, but it is

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