Jay Doblin

Jay Doblin (December 10, 1920 – May 11, 1989) was an American industrial designer and educator, best known for his contribution to the field of design in particular his work related to systems thinking, design methods and design theory in general. Throughout his professional career Doblin worked with some of the most important design firms of their time including Raymond Loewy Associates, Lippincott & Margulies, and Unimark International, which he founded together with Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda. Jay was born in Brooklyn, NY and graduated from Pratt Institute in 1942. He worked for Raymond Loewy from 1942 to 1955 directing the Frigidaire account and designing vending machines for Coca-Cola, razors for Schick and fountain pens for Eversharp. Between 1955 and 1969, and after the resignation of Serge Chermayeff, he served as director of the IIT Institute of Design, a design school founded in 1937 in Chicago by László Moholy-Nagy, a former Bauhaus teacher. After his tenure as director, he stayed involved with school as a professor. Doblin was president of The American Society of Industrial designers (ASID) in 1956 and of the Industrial Design Educators Association (IDEA) in 1962. In 1981 he founded his strategic design planning consultancy, Doblin with Larry Keeley. In 2004, Jay Doblin was awarded the medal of the AIGA. Doblin became part of Monitor Group's innovation practice in 2007, and was acquired by Deloitte in 2013.