Jay Doblin was born in Brooklyn, NY and graduated from Pratt Institute in 1942. He worked for Raymond Loewy from 1942 to 1955, directing the Frigidaire account and designing vending machines for Coca-Cola, razors for Schick and fountain pens for Eversharp. Between 1955 and 1969, after the resignation of Serge Chermayeff, he served as director of the IIT Institute of Design, the design school founded in 1937 in Chicago by László Moholy-Nagy, a former Bauhaus teacher. After his tenure as director, he stayed involved with school as a professor. As an educator, Doblin is best known for his contribution to the field of design in particular his work related to systems thinking, design methods and design theory in general.

In 1964, together with Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda, he was co-founder of Unimark International which grew to be one of the largest international design firms in the country. He was co-founder of the Doblin Group Jay Doblin & Associates in 1978 and in 1981 he founded his strategic design planning consultancy, Doblin, with Larry Keeley. Doblin became part of Monitor Group's innovation practice in 2007 and was acquired by Deloitte in 2013.

Jay Doblin was president of The American Society of Industrial designers (ASID) in 1956 and of the Industrial Design Educators Association (IDEA) in 1962. He was awarded the AIGA Medal in 2004.

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