 |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |
 |
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972 (facsimile edition, 2017)
“Cooper clearly inherited the most common and identifiable elements of Swiss design: the preference for sans serif fonts, such as Standard, Univers, and Helvetica, and the use of an underlying modular grid to organize text and image. Although the modular grid is often regarded as a rigid typographic convention, it is actually quite flexible and no more constraining than any other kind of pictorial or graphic 'convention' (...) From all reports, Cooper used the grid imaginatively, and never merely applied it in a rigid or slavish manner (...) Cooper's layouts for Learning from Las Vegas functioned as a kind of 'synoptic dummy' for her, in that they showed how the pages related to each other in terms of rhythm and spacing, without one's having to flip through the actual pages of the book. Cooper was always interested in this implicit motion in the design of her books, and the mock-ups allowed her to 'virtually' explore these issues on a single sheets of paper. Cooper's association with the design of the Bauhaus book was undoubtedly a striking exemplification for Venturi and Scott Brown of the supposed mismatch between her 'latter-day Bauhaus design' for Learning from Las Vegas and the book's content.”
Aron Vinegar. I am a monument: on Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008 (p. 130, 134)
“We disapproved of its graphic design. Learning from Las Vegas originated in an impassioned critique of late Modern architecture—not the robust Modernism of the 1930s, but the thin, stale 1960s version. In choosing Swiss graphics, the designer, Muriel Cooper, had selected the very formula we were fighting. She challenged our basic premise.”
Stephanie Salomon, Steve Kroeter. "Still Learning from Denise Scott Brown: 45 Years of learning from Las Vegas." In Designers & Books, January 7, 2014 https://www.designersandbooks.com/blog/still-learning-from-denise-scott-brown
“Although the first edition of Learning from Las Vegas is now celebrated in design circles, often illustrated alongside Cooper's famous design for Hans Wingler's monumental Bauhaus (MIT, 1969), Venturi and Scott Brown were not impressed with the results. As Venturi wrote to Michael Connelly, then editorial director at the MIT Press, in the latter stages of the book's production: 'we cannot have a book that for the sake of some design theories obscures the meaning by its format inside, and on the cover is the opposite of what we as designers, and of what the book itself, stands for'. After the book was finished, Scott Brown reiterated to Connelly: 'The "Swiss style" graphic design remains a disappointment to us'.”
Aron Vinegar. I am a monument: on Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008 (p. 117)