This is Joe the Average American Adult Male

Designer: Henry Dreyfuss

1955

Black marker over graphite on blue linen

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Alvin Tilley, an industrial designer who specialized in anthropometrics, worked for nearly 50 years for Henry Dreyfuss Associates in New York, one of the leading American industrial design studios. Tilley's studies of human proportions were published in several books and became fundamental references in industrial design. The earliest, Designing for People (1955), featured three protagonists: Joe, Josephine, and Joe Jr.--created to epitomize the average American body types. Their carefully analyzed and measured figures are the result of an exhaustive study of the widely varied human population. The goal was to find an elusive averag