I bet y’all just flipping on the lights in your rooms and offices, dimming the lights, without ever thinking who designed it! OK, so me too – but that’s the stuff Industrial Designers do! They also design the packaging for the things you pick up off the shelf without thinking about that part at the grocery store, Costco, Sam’s Club and everywhere else. Who knew??
Noel Mayo
Philadelphia native industrial designer Noel Mayo is the owner and president of Noel Mayo Associates, Inc., the first African American industrial design firm in the United States, whose clients include NASA, IBM, the Department of Commerce and Agriculture, Black and Decker, the Museum of American Jewish History and the Philadelphia International Airport.
Mayo was the first black graduate to receive a B.S. degree in Industrial Design from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1960. He later became chairperson of this department, making him the first African American chairperson of an industrial design program in the United States. He held that post for eleven years and was awarded an honorary D.F.A. degree from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1981.
Office telephone and receipt machine designed by Noel Mayo
He has designed telephones, seating, desks, lighting fixtures, 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. Below, the Philadelphia Convention Center, light fixtures designed by Noel Mayo.
Since the 1960s, he has enjoyed a relationship with Lutron Electronics; designing a majority of their products, and guiding their aesthetic and functional direction. Notably, he designed Nova, the first linear dimmer for commercial application. He designed Attache, Credenza and Versaplex which were selected for Industrial Design magazine’s 1977 Design Review.
He designed two homes for Lutron’s CEO and their two office buildings. Lutron’s design sensibility is recognized around the world.
Mayo’s firm also designs the packaging for numerous products:
In 1989 he was named the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Art and Design Technology at the Ohio State University, a program designed to attract nationally and internationally known scholars to further strengthen outstanding academic programs that deal with compelling statewide and national issues.
He has been instrumental in establishing various mentoring programs for minorities and establishing a directory of minority professionals in industrial, graphic, interior and architectural design. He has been instrumental in establishing minority mentoring programs in the IDSA, SEGD, and Ohio State University.