Ray’s depiction of “an abstract diagram” relates closely to a better-known drawing by Charles that was shown alongside examples of their work in the 1969 group exhibition What Is Design? at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
Charles’s version included labels explaining that the intersecting forms represented the concerns of: (1) a design office, (2) its clients, and (3) “society as a whole.” The overlap between them, he concluded, is where “the designer can work with conviction and enthusiasm.”