Until the arrival of Elliot Noyes as IBM consulting director of design,
IBM’s many office products were a confusion of styles: from 1930s-era
punched card equipment—complete with steel Queen Anne legs—to room sized
computers inflected with mid-century styling, festooned with tiny signal
lamps. As IBM consolidated its various product lines in the early 1960s,
most importantly with the 1964 System/360 mainframe, it also
consolidated its corporate style: Noyes simplified IBM’s design
vernacular to represent clean typography, a minimalist aesthetic,
unified branding and office equipment and computers that were intuitive
and easy to use.
Along with the corporate overhaul by Noyes and his associates, husband
and wife team Charles and Ray Eames also worked closely with IBM to
re-imagine the company for the 20th century. While Elliot Noyes was an
industrial designer who focused on corporate design and branding, the
Eameses were renowned for their contributions to furniture design,
architecture, and multimedia productions.
https://computerhistory.org/blog/ibm-and-the-transformation-of-corporate-design
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