Reflections on a Design Pioneer

He hated what they called packaging jobs or "slip cover design," or a design house style. He wanted to get to the essence of the company. That's why he would listen to the CEOs.

GB: He always insisted that if you really want to do a good job, you have to set up an infrastructure that is going to support design. So, with the big corporations, he was given the title of Consulting Design Director, but he also made sure that there was a design person at an executive level. In the case of IBM it was a VP, the Director of Communications, whose responsibility was not only communications, but also being responsible for the design program within the corporation. In that sense, design was put on an equal par, not more important and less important, as marketing and engineering.

Eliot also said there had to be a separate budget just for setting up this design infrastructure at the executive level and if a company didn't have a budget set aside for this, then it wouldn't work. So, outside of the consulting fees for himself and the design done by the Noyes office (or the Eameses or Paul Rand,) the executive position for design within the company was a totally separate issue. He demanded that the corporation have a sufficient budget for internal people at the executive level to make sure that everything was managed well.

PL: Is it correct to say that Eliot did not see his outside consulting roles going on forever, that he aimed to facilitate the transitioning of these roles over to being done by internal people?

GB: Yes. He wanted to set up this evolutionary design heritage and this idea became the basis for what the corporation became famous for, and one of the many things that would help it turn around from where it was. He knew that he was not going to always be there so he wanted to set up a mechanism, internal to the corporation, that would always be an ongoing thing. I think it's done fairly well at IBM, as this design heritage has continued, and at Cummings Engine as well. Today, Mobil is another question simply because of the Exxon merger.

PL: Eliot had continuous access to the highest levels of the corporation, how did he achieve that?

GB: Eliot had that personal charm that you just can't find everywhere. He was very mild mannered. His goal was not for himself, but for the corporations -- he knew if the corporation did well, he would do well.

Another critical element to Eliot's success was the internal design reviews he set up. At IBM he started this, holding design reviews during which he had all the products brought into a big, white room. This was his method of creating consistency -- if you can't do anything else, at least design things in a way that everything goes with everything else. These corporate management design reviews would include Eliot, Walt Kraus (IBM's internal Design Director,) Paul Rand, and a boatload of internal design directors from all over IBM. Sometimes Tom Watson, Jr. would join them so that Eliot could bring him up to speed about what was important about design. They would do this maybe four to six times a year.

PL: Would it be fair to say that Eliot's approach was more comprehensive than any approach today? For example, it included architecture and that was just as important as everything else in the program.

GB: Yes, exactly. He once said that he would assemble teams of right minded people and he was the one who would decide the direction they should be going in. Another word he used all the time was appropriate. Everything he did had a sense of appropriateness to it.

Another key thing was ramping up, how to make the transition was very important. That's why at IBM he selected Paul Rand. He got Paul right away to do the graphics, because that could be done very quickly and it sent out a signal to everybody that this company was changing. He would then move onto the signage, because replacing it was an incredibly expensive thing. He would then move onto the product, and then move to the architecture.

PL: All of this work was expensive, the results unproven, and at that time, there were almost no examples of this kind of work to point to. How did he convince the CEOs?

GB: He was very smart in the way he would convince people with money about why this was necessary. In the beginning, it wasn't easy. He had to prove himself. It was very important to him to have a sufficient budget to do the right job. If potential clients seemed to be expecting everything for nothing, Eliot wouldn't take the job because it would ruin his credibility. Basically, before Eliot became the design director, for 10 years he worked with Watson Jr. He recognized the fact that he could not change Tom Watson, Sr., so he built up this relationship with Tom Watson, Jr. He realized that he was the guy who could enact the changes. It was also as much about the enlightened CEO's -- Thomas Watson Jr., Mark Cresap, Rawleigh Warner, Jr. Jr. and Irwin Miller, as it was about Eliot. This should not be forgotten.