The story of Eliot Noyes, who taught business to speak the language of design.
As a young American architect, Eliot Noyes worked under Bauhaus director Walter Gropius, from whom he inherited a love of modernism: simple forms, functionality, and a belief in the power of design to make the world better. In the 1950s, as an art director at IBM, Noyes carried those values with him to the world of big business. He was the first to formulate the idea of corporate design—the then revolutionary and today obvious idea that a good business should be great in everything, from its produce and logo to the office layout. Upon seeing the IBM computing machines, which looked like monsters covered in switches and cables, he came up with the idea of «friendly computers» that would be easy and pleasant to interact with (this became the foundational idea behind Apple).
The film follows the architect’s career and his work for IBM and other giant American corporations. Modernism, Inc. is in itself an example of good design: compact and dynamic and with a human face due to the participation of Noyes’ children, who share their memories of their father and of growing up in a modernist house with glass walls and an unusual layout.
The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.
Modernism, Inc.: The Eliot Noyes Design Story
Director: Jason Kohn
USA, 2023. 79 min
18+
