Sara Little Turnbull

Sara Little Turnbull died in 2015 at age 97 in Seattle.

In 2008, Chrysler Corporation established the Chrysler Sara Little Turnbull Scholarship at Academy of Art University. 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.

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. The Laboratory tracks change internationally, in more than 375 areas including, education, healthcare, aging, sexuality, food and nutrition, housing, politics, and culture. Little used this information to fuel her design concepts. "The quality of life of a people dictates what they design, what they make," she said. "It's a reflection of life itself."

She received a Distinguished Designer Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988; the Trailblazer Award from the National Home Fashion League (1980), and an honorary doctorate from Academy of Art University (2003). Also, in 1980 she is mentioned in the United States Congressional Record with distinction by Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield.

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 3500 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.

In 1965, Little left the magazine world and formed Sara Little Design Consultant. At the time, she wrote a trade article for Housewares Review entitled "Forgetting the Little Woman". Her premise was that most companies created products for retail buyers, instead of considering the people who were actually going to use them. The story caught the attention of prominent executives, including the heads of General Mills, 3M and Corning Glass. All three companies eventually hired her as a product research and marketing consultant to assist in finding new applications for technologies developed for the war effort. She helped create disposable medical and antipollution masks made from non-woven fibers, which inspired the design details for today’s N-95 masks, as well as soy protein foodstuffs, and the ubiquitous freezer-to-oven CorningWare that was developed from a material originally used on missile cones.

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." She was one of America's early industrial designers and one of the first women to succeed in a male-dominated post-World War II design industry. She helped to create essential products from medical masks 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.

Sara Finkelstein was born on September 21, 1917, in Manhattan, New York to Russian immigrant parents, and was raised in Brooklyn. Her mother introduced her to the use of color and form by arranging fruits and vegetables in bowls. She was a child actress in the Yiddish Theater, and in high school, she received early accolades in design, winning an award for textile design. She attended Parsons School of Design on scholarships from the School Art League of NYC and the National Council of Jewish Women, graduating in 1939 with a degree in Advertising Design.