Sara Little Turnbull

Sara Little Turnbull (née Finkelstein; September 21, 1917 – September 3, 2015) was an American product designer, design innovator and educator. She advised corporate America on product design from 1935 – 2005, and has been described as "corporate America's secret weapon." to space suits, and founded and led both the Sara Little Center for Design and the Process of Change: Laboratory for Innovation and Design at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She approached design as a self-trained cultural anthropologist and believed that a thorough understanding of the fine-grain details of how different cultures behaved was key to successful and innovative business solutions.

Early life and education

Sara Finkelstein was born on September 21, 1917, in Manhattan, New York to Russian immigrant parents in a modest household and was raised in Brooklyn and the National Council of Jewish Women, graduating in 1939 with a degree in Advertising Design.

Because she was tall, she acquired the nickname "Little Sara," and then began to call herself Sara Little professionally.

Career

Early career During college, Sara Little worked at Marshall Field & Company (now Macy’s) as an assistant art director in illustration and package design, then as an art director at Blaker Advertising Agency. and the ubiquitous freezer-to-oven CorningWare that was developed from a material originally used on missile cones.

During her 70-year design career she was more than anything else a strategic design consultant. She was one of the earliest professional designers to promote human-centered design methodology, consumer awareness, and cultural change to an international slate of companies such as: Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Marks & Spencer, American Can, DuPont, Ford, Nissan, Pfizer, Revlon, Elizabeth Arden, Lever Brothers, Motorola, NASA and Volvo. She collaborated on a range of domestic products including housewares, home storage systems, foodstuffs, the glass cooktop, microwave cooking products, personal care, medication delivery systems, cosmetics, new fabric manufacturing processes (knit and non-wovens), space suits, furniture, toys, decoration and packaging, household cleaning products, pet care, tapes and adhesives, and car interiors.

Many of her ideas arose from her intense interest in world cultures and nature. Her work often showcased what later became known as the principles of biomimicry. She traveled frequently to destinations such as Borneo, Malaysia, the Philippines, India, Japan, China, Kenya, and more, always on the lookout for how people and animals solved the problems of everyday living. Her design for a pot lid was inspired by observing cheetahs grasping their prey in the wild. “It always starts with a fundamental curiosity,” she said of her quest for innovative product design. “When I can't find the answer in a book, I go out and search for it. The excitement of my life is that I have always jumped into the unknown to find what I needed to know.” In another case, she began the design process for a burglar-proof lock by interviewing imprisoned persons. . The Laboratory tracks change internationally, collection articles since the 1950s and including topics in more than 375 areas including, education, healthcare, aging, sexuality, food and nutrition, housing, politics, and culture.

In 1971, she established the Center for Design Research at the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington State to archive and display her collection of over 3,500 artifacts gathered during her travels. The study collection includes body coverings and accessories, food preparation and dining implements, textiles, fine and folk art, much of which had influenced her concepts for domestic product design. These artifacts were used for her own inspiration as a part of her design methodology. The collection was deaccessioned from the Tacoma Art Museum in 2003 and has been re-established in Seattle, WA as the Sara Little Turnbull Center for Design Institute, focused on educating the public on design, and design scholarship for women.

Process of Change: Laboratory for Innovation and Design In 1988, Little founded and, for the next 18 years, directed the Process of Change: Laboratory for Innovation and Design at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In her work with students at Stanford, Little continually emphasized digging deep into the "why" of a product before leaping into the "how," in order to avoid designing products that only addressed superficial symptoms rather than the deeper need. That’s why the Process of Change Laboratory delineated the need to know more. Design requires a background of scholarship, otherwise, it remains a visual trick.”

On Sara’s passing in 2015, an educational, non-profit called the Sara Little Turnbull Center for Design Institute was created with her collections and a mission to educate the public about design. Now located in Seattle, Washington, it is open to visit by appointment. The Modern Art Council of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art designated her a "Bay Area Living Treasure" in 2001. In 2006, at the age of 89, Sara Little received the Lifetime Achievement Award from ico-D (International Congress of Graphic Design Associations), becoming the only person from the United States to do so.

Board service

1948: Design Associate, American Institute of Decorators 1951–54: Alumni Board, Parsons School of Art and Design 1960s: Board, Home Furnishings Council (HFC) 1960-1980s: Board of Trustees, School Art League of the City of New York 1965–70: Board of Trustees, Parsons School of Art and Design 1972: Board Member, The Architects Collaborative (TAC) 1979: Board of Directors and Founding Board Member, Innovative Design Fund, Inc 1980s: Board of Directors, Tacoma Art Museum 1990s: Board of Directors, Corporate Design Foundation (CDF) 1991: Board of Directors, Long Term Care Implementation Committee at the Age Center Alliance, Inc. 1995: Advisory Member, National Design Forum 1998: Board of Directors, Tacoma Art Museum 2004: Board of Directors, Cooper Hewitt Museum and Committee for the Arts

Personal life and death At age 48, she married James R. Turnbull, then executive vice president of Douglas Fir Plywood Association in Tacoma, Washington. Later, when James Turnbull became executive vice president of National Forest Products Association, they moved to Washington, D.C., with an apartment at the Watergate complex. They were living there during the White House plumbers break-in.

Footnotes