Three Basic Human Body Types--Frontal

Designer: Henry Dreyfuss

1966

Black marker over graphite on gray 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. While his earliest work sought to establish an elusive average to serve as a model to guide industrial designers, his later studies eschewed the principle of designing for a single average type. Instead he presented the human body in various forms-from the 1st to 99th percentiles, and included infants, children, th