HUMANSCALE 1/2/3
HUMANSCALE 4/5/6
HUMANSCALE 7/8/9
Neils Diffrient, Alvin R. Tilley and Joan C. Bardagjy [Authors]
Henry Dreyfuss Associates [design]
Neils Diffrient, Alvin R. Tilley and Joan C. Bardagjy [Authors], Henry Dreyfuss Associates [design]: HUMANSCALE 1/2/3 [A Portfolio of Information: 1. Sizes of People; 2. Seating Considerations; 3. Requirements for The Handicapped and Elderly]. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1974. Third printing from 1979. Plastic screen-printed wallet. 32 pp. saddle-stitched booklet. Three plastic measuring devices with moveable wheels. Booklet and measuring devices lightly rubbed from storage in nearly fine condition, housed in a very good or better plastic wallet with light edgewear and spotting.
Neils Diffrient, Alvin R. Tilley and Joan C. Bardagjy [Authors], Henry Dreyfuss Associates [design]: HUMANSCALE 4/5/6 [A Portfolio of Information: 4. Human Strength and Safety; 5. Controls and Displays; 6. Designing for People (dimensions of human heads, hands, and feet)]. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1981. First edition. Plastic screen-printed wallet. 48 pp. saddle-stitched booklet. Three plastic measuring devices with moveable wheels. Booklet and measuring devices lightly rubbed from storage in nearly fine condition, housed in a very good or better plastic wallet with light edgewear and spotting.
Neils Diffrient, Alvin R. Tilley and Joan C. Bardagjy [Authors], Henry Dreyfuss Associates [design]: HUMANSCALE 7/8/9 [A Portfolio of Information: 7. Standing and Seating at Work; 8. Space Planning for the Individual and the Public; 9. Access for Maintenance, Stairs, Light, and Color]. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1981. First edition. Plastic screen-printed wallet. 52 pp. saddle-stitched booklet. Three plastic measuring devices with moveable wheels. Booklet and measuring devices lightly rubbed from storage in nearly fine condition, housed in a very good or better plastic wallet with light edgewear and spotting. Complete sets of this elaborate Information Design Project are rare.
[3] 8.5 x 11 portfolios containing a 32 to 52 page booklets and three sets of three pictorial selectors equipped with rotary dials. In the golden age of American industrial design, Henry Dreyfuss Associates knew that there was more to design than just looking good. Products had to be good, crafted to work with the people who use them. With this in mind, HDA designers Niels Diffrient and Alvin R. Tilley created Humanscale, including its ingenious data selectors. The nine selectors (two sides each) present over 60,000 human factors data points in one easily referenced, user-friendly ‘portfolio of information.’ With these beautiful booklets and interactive data selectors, designers, engineers, architects, and inventors can reference data that serves as a starting point to design products for people.
From the book: Humanscale is an important tool for everyone who designs for the human body. It incorporates the extensive amount of human engineering data compiled and organized by Henry Dreyfuss Associates over the last thirty years, including the most up-to-date research of anthropologists, psychologists, scientists, human engineers and medical experts.
“Engineers, architects, industrial designers, planners, interior and furniture designers, and craftsmen will find that the selectors minimize their searching through numerous and conflicting sources and unreliable information. Humanscale is not a panacea, of course. More detailed studies dealing with interior space, safety, human strength and movement, consoles, displays, vision, reach, controls, and pedals should also be consulted. The selectors should be used in a creative way, and the models and mock-ups based on the data should be tried out with the intended users.”
Niels Diffrient [FIDSA] [1928 – 2013] graduated from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1954 with a BFA in design and architecture. He worked in the office of Eero Saarinen from 1949 to 1952, assisting in the design of the Knoll #71 and #72 chair series. He designed Ford Rotunda Exhibits and special furniture for the Ford Motor Company with the Walter B. Ford office from 1953 to 1954. He was awarded a 1954 Fulbright Grant to Italy in design and architecture, where he practiced with Marco Zanuso, and with whom he won the Medaglio D'Oro in 1957 for the Borietti sewing machine.
Diffrient was with Henry Dreyfuss Associates from 1955 to 1980, where he worked on a large range of products for numerous clients. He became an associate in 1967 and a partner in 1970. He taught graduate level industrial design at the University of California from 1961 to 1969. With National Endowment for the Arts grants from 1975 to 1981, he co-authored HUMANSCALE 1/2/3, HUMANSCALE 4/5/6, and HUMANSCALE 7/8/9, valuable human factors tools for designers. He designed the 1979 Diffrient Seating Series for Knoll.
Diffrient established his own studio in Ridgefield, Conn., in 1981, concentrating on furniture design. This included office seating and the "Flexible Workspace" for Knoll International, and the "Freedom Chair" for Humanscale Corporation in 1999. He holds 23 design patents and 19 utility patents for furniture.
The name Henry Dreyfuss is synonymous with industrial design. Dreyfuss was one of the "big four" industrial designers, along with Walter Dorwin Teague, Norman bel Geddes and Raymond Loewy.
During his 44-year career, the versatile Dreyfuss designed hundreds of products that have become icons of modern design, among them the Princess and Trimline telephones, John Deere tractors and Hoover vacuum cleaners, which he outfitted with headlights and bumpers to protect furniture. Other designs by Dreyfuss range from the familiar Honeywell round, wall-mounted thermostat, the Big Ben alarm clock, trains such as the 20th Century Limited for the New York Central Railroad, and the "Situation Room" for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during World War II.
Dreyfuss streamlined even his wardrobe by wearing only brown suits, stayed exclusively at the Plaza hotel while he was in New York, so clients could always find him, and reportedly missed only five days of work in twenty-two years. He enjoyed long-standing relationships with such firms as AT&T, John Deere & Co., Honeywell and Lockheed.