Interview of Gordon Bruce by Peter Lawrence.
Eliot Noyes was born in Boston, in 1910. He began his career as an architect working in the office of Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius. He was the first Director of the Industrial Design department at MoMA in the 1940s. From the late 1950s until his death in 1977, Noyes was Consulting Director of Design for IBM, Mobil Oil, Westinghouse and Cummins Engine Company, while working with a wide range of other firms.
Gordon Bruce is an industrial designer who worked for Eliot Noyes from the late 60's until Noyes's death in 1977. He works internationally as a design consultant and is the author of the book, Eliot Noyes, Phaidon Press, 2006.

PL: In summary, who was Eliot Noyes?

GB: Eliot was a pioneer of American architecture and design who brought credibility to these professions by articulating new design approaches in terms that were easily understood by business people at a time when design decisions were based on vague streamlining styles and planned obsolescence. Moreover, Eliot introduced a new American design attitude by creating solutions based on function and meaningful human interaction, which in turn introduced a new mindset for big business.

PL: What type of work did Eliot do?

GB: Eliot had three businesses operating in parallel at Eliot Noyes & Associates. He first considered himself an architect: he designed corporate buildings, private residences, schools, air terminals, and pavilions.

Second, he was also an industrial designer. Under his guidance, this part of his office designed the most visible products for the major corporate programs he ran at places like IBM and Mobil, and also at other companies for which he was not the consulting director of design, such as Rockwell International, Perkin-Elmer and GE.

Third, he served as Consultant Director of Design for major corporations with a self appointed title -- Curator of Corporate Character -- overseeing architecture, product, graphics, exhibit design and fine art. This work for IBM, Westinghouse, Mobil and Cummins required most of his time. The goal of this part of his business was to advise management on how to integrate all aspects of the design disciplines to create design continuity at all levels within the corporation. The aim was to express a design meaningfulness as well as embody the true corporate character, which is core to evolving a good reputation.

PL: For corporate programs, I believe Eliot advocated a level of excellence, rather than a corporate style. Is that correct?

GB: Exactly. Expressing the true character of the company took on a form expressed through the highest level of excellence within a given means and scope. Eliot believed in unity, not uniformity. Unity being a family of ideas with a distinctive character held together by excellence, while uniformity being more about following a consistent style like being a military branch where everybody wears the same uniforms and everybody looks exactly the same.

He also would assemble the best players, such as Charles Eames and Paul Rand, to work in concert with his office to attain the best teams of people; to deal with graphics, industrial design and architecture; and to search for the best solutions within the given constraints of the project.