Watch: RIT Design Conversations – A Life of Firsts: Noel Mayo [VIDEO]

We are pleased to share the next rebroadcast of this year’s The Vignelli Center for Design Studies’ Design Conversations Lecture Series with legendary designer Noel Mayo – A Life of Firsts. Noel Mayo is a designer and educator, and is Owner and President of Noel Mayo Associates, Inc., the first African American industrial design firm in the United States.

This talk is full of incredible designs and the stories behind them. As Josh Owen, Director of the Vignelli Center for Design Studies noted, when Noel walks into the room… everyone stops talking: he’s kind of a big deal. For example, he reimagined the light switch for Lutron, created the first in-line deposit/withdrawal for banks, as well as telephones, seating, desks, lighting fixture, offices, stores and restaurants. He has worked on the design of exhibits in Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, Lagos, Barcelona, Casablanca, and the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Watch:

If you liked this lecture, please go back and watch the first lecture, Level Up Design with Natalie Nixon. Stay tuned for another lecture coming next month.

To learn more about The Vignelli Center for Design Studies at RIT, they have launched digital access to the archives through Google Arts & Culture, joining over 2000 cultural institutions from around the world. The initial launch includes nearly 900 high resolution images of artifacts from the archives so that now anyone with access to the Internet and Google Arts & Culture can search the Vignelli archives or browse it by color or chronological order. Very exciting!

This lecture series is made possible in part by the generosity of RIT Alumnus, Chris Bailey and Bailey Brand Consulting.

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living in SoCal. She dreams about funky, artistic jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, making music, and drawing.

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