About Sara
1917 - 2015
The “Girl with a Future” became a Maven Among the Moguls
As one of America’s earliest female industrial designers, Sara Little Turnbull was a powerful and influential voice in design and product development. Beginning her career, while attending Parsons School of Design in the mid-1930s, Sara started her first phase of work in advertising, packaging and illustration. She then became a decor editor at House Beautiful magazine for nearly 20 years and worked with many of America’s mid-century architects and photographers. In 1958, she formed her design consultancy. Postwar, Sara was hired by many Fortune 100 companies to design new applications for technologies that were developed for the war effort. Consulting with international corporations and governments’ leadership, Sara was recognized within the business world, but invisible to the general public. “I am scrupulous about not taking credit for any idea,” she said. “An original concept may be mine, but the result is only as good as its final implementation.”
Sara always conducted her research in the real world. Never one to settle for the easy or convenient answer, she typically traveled around the world at least once a year, at a time when doing so as a single female was not easy nor common. For Sara, the solution of getting dinner on the table — whether you stalked it on the savannah or simmered it on the stove — came down to good design.
First and foremost, she was interested in designing things that people would embrace, use, and make their daily life easier. “As far as I’m concerned, I did fieldwork. I had a very intense interest in the people I observed, what they were doing, and why they were doing it. I think that I was born with a respect for what ordinary people are and what they do and what they’re capable of.” She used this information to fuel her design concepts with an equal mix of logic and intuitive leaps. “The quality of life of a people dictates what they design, what they make,” she said. “It’s a reflection of life itself.”
Ahead of her time, Sara used biomimicry in many of her design solutions. She insisted the emerging practice of ‘planned obsolesce’ was unethical and unsustainable. She said, “As women, we have what it takes to have the courage to speak the truth, make the truth, and live with the truth.”
In her 70’s, Sara went to Stanford as a consulting professor and established her working design lab, the Process of Change within the Graduate School of Business. Working with her colleagues, she developed innovative interdisciplinary courses that emphasized collaborative product development between engineering and business school students. In the process, she introduced her graduate students to the principles that her working peers later commodified as ‘design thinking’ and ‘human-centered design.’
Sara believed, “The designer is the conscience of the company. We can’t expect anyone else to fill this role. Design requires a background of scholarship; otherwise, it remains a visual trick.” She reminded her students, “You will not always be understood, you may even incite envy and veiled hostility. But keep in mind that the designer is the custodian of the care and kindness extended to the user. Aesthetics is only one consideration.”
In addition to her work at Stanford, Sara was a guest lecturer at Parsons, Rhode Island School of Design, MIT, Harvard, Illinois School of Technology, Copenhagen Business School, University of Washington, San Francisco State University, and the University of California Berkeley.
She received many awards and honors, including the distinguished Design Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Trailblazer Award from the National Home Fashion League, and an honorary doctorate from The Academy of Art. The Art Council of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art designated her a “Bay Area Living Treasure.” And at the age of 89, Sara received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Congress of Graphic Design Associations (ico-D). Her contributions to American design have also been lauded on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Sara Little was modest and unassuming about her extraordinary influence in the world of design. She was aware that authentic creativity and innovation may not always be immediately understood, welcomed, or recognized. Still, she believed that if you create genuinely useful and beautiful things, your life will be fulfilling, and your vision will outlive you. And so, it has through her Center for Design, which is now sharing her story and prescient messages worldwide.
Photo: © 2018 Center for Design Institute
The Center for Design Books is launching a children's book series called Sara Little Trouble Maker, which is based on Sara and her design work. The first book, Lettuce Get in Trouble, is available now.