“I am cobalt” Thérèse Moll

Abstract

Thérèse Moll (1934 - 1961), a little known but by no means secondary figure, is part of the history of visual communication design in which she left a brief but lasting trace. Moll is enrolled at the School of Arts and Crafts in Basel where she meets important designers and teachers including Armin Hoffman, Emil Ruder, Karl Gerstner and Antonio Boggeri. Still very young, she receives an invitation to be a visiting designer at MIT in Boston. At the beginning of 1959, Thérèse Moll arrives in the U.S.A. and during her four-month stay she works with Jacqueline S. Casey and Ralph Coburn at MIT’s Office of Publications, radically modifying the MIT communication, while at the same time introducing to her American colleagues the modernity and experimentation of the Swiss school of which she too is a spokesperson.The grid system, the typography, and the asymmetrical composition are only some of the elements of the efficient machine for communicating represented by the Swiss school that, like Le Corbusier’s house was a machine for living, is a powerful and effective device that responds to a specific need and that improves our quality of life.