Muriel Cooper

At 49 years old in 1973, Cooper was already well known in the design industry. Cooper left her full-time position at MIT Press in 1974 to found the MIT Visual Language Workshop with her designer, Ron MacNeil.

Cooper taught interactive media design as the founder and head of the Visible Language Workshop (VLW).[1] She was recognized as a pioneer in designing and changing the landscape of electronic communication.[1][3] Although she never learned to program computers, she could see the design possibilities opened up by the technology, and worked closely with programmers and engineers to experiment with new concepts in the presentation of complex information.[7] In 1976, her students literally broke down the wall between design and production of media, experimenting with a wide variety of new computing, electronics, and printing technologies.[7]:14

The MIT students had very diverse backgrounds and interests, and Cooper emphasized a generalist approach, encouraging them to switch flexibly among editorial, platemaking, printing, typesetting, and design tasks.[7] In the mid-1970s, VLW students would work overnight to produce posters for campus-wide events, including designs by Cooper's former Design Services colleagues, Jacqueline Casey and Ralph Coburn.[7] Cooper explored early versions of nearby Polaroid Corporation's new SX-70 instant color camera, as well as experimental large-format Polaroid cameras and film.[7] In the early 1980s, Cooper secured major funding from the Outdoor Advertising Association, and pioneered the development of large-scale printers that could quickly produce billboard-sized high-resolution graphics and eventually full-color photographs.[7]

Around this time, Cooper was asked for a 250-word concise biography. She summarized her career to date in 65 words:

Muriel Cooper/first designer/art director MIT Office of Publications | Fulbright Scholarship, Milan, Italy/ Consulting firm Muriel Cooper Media Design | Media Director MIT Press/ currently Director Visible Language Workshop | Associate Professor Department of Architecture/ Special Projects Director MIT Press.

Her concerns have always been with beginnings and process. | More with change and technology and their meanings to human communication than with rigorous graphic design theory and style.

At the VLW, Cooper pursued a constant examination of graphic production in multiple media, and led a team of graduate students and researchers in the search of new forms, methods and techniques for graphic design that were specific to the emerging context of text on a computer display.[15]