View-Master 3D Viewer by Design Logic

This is one of the more successful products created by Design Logic, a product design company whose records I’m currently processing. This View-Master 3D Viewer was a new take on an old, familiar product, and reflected the company’s philosophy that every product has both a technical and emotional element. This new version, created in 1985, featured “push-button technology,” and larger image magnification to make it more technologically competitive with other toys of the era, while maintaining the overall look of its predecessor. Time magazine named it one of the best designs of the year.

Design Logic was founded in 1985 by Cranbrook Art Academy graduate David Gresham, and Martin Thayer, a Royal College of Art graduate; the two worked together at ITT Corporation. Operating out of Chicago, the mission of the company was to “create designs that are functional, beautiful, profitable and based on a distinctively American perspective.” The company is no longer in business.

Once the processing of the Design Logic records is complete, a finding aid will be posted on our web site and more images of their creative, unusual products will be in our digital database, so keep an eye out!

– Cheri Gay, Archivist