MODERNISM, INC.
Modernism, Inc.: The Eliot Noyes Design Story explores the nuance and depth of design, pushing past the stereotypes and changing culture as we know it. Director Jason Cohn utilizes photographs with minute elements of movement, newsreels, sit-downs with experts, and archival interviews of Noyes. My favorite aspect has to be the hyper-stylized ’60s educational and instructional videos.
Noyes was not only a genius of design, but his knack for marketing was unsurpassed. His inventive thinking influenced more than you can begin to fathom. Furniture, war strategies, typewriters, gas stations, and computers all contain a part of Noyes’s brain. IBM would not be what it is today without Noyes, Paul Rand, and The Eames Brothers working in tandem and changing the technology field. The film’s design precisely mirrors the multiscreen technique they loved so much. Editor Kevin Jones delivers visual intricacy and intriguing simplicity in the narrative transitions.
After starting a family in New York City, a flat tire during a drive north led to New Canaan, Connecticut, becoming an international design community. I know this first hand, as someone raised in CT, starting a family in The Big Apple, and bidding on New Canaan houses inspired by Noyes only a year ago. Having ultimately settled in the town next door, I am lucky. I can drive 7.8 miles to visit his landmark home. As the granddaughter of a builder, niece of an architect, daughter of an artist, and fan of mid-century design, it’s all heavenly to me.
Modernism, Inc. is a history lesson and a visual feast for fans of the movement. Eliot Noyes should be a household name. If it wasn’t before, Modernism, Inc. is a vital step in correcting that.
Architect Eliot Noyes was one of the leading pioneers of modern design during the mid-century, post-war boom in the United States.
Educated by Walter Gropius at Harvard, Noyes did more than anyone to align the Modernist design ethos to the needs of ascendant corporate America. His impact on companies like IBM and Mobil Oil paved the way for Apple and many of the other design-conscious brands we know today.
Modernism, Inc. follows Noyes’ career up to a time when disruptive designers of the early ’70s began pushing back against the Modernist view of progress.
As he did in Eames: The Architect and the Painter (co-directed with Bill Jersey), filmmaker Jason Cohn uses the story of a mid-century icon to raise contemporary questions about the role of a designer in today’s world.
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