Milton Glaser (June 26, 1929June 26, 2020) was an American

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...

. His most notable designs include the

I Love New York I Love New York (stylized ) is a slogan, a logo, and a song that are the basis of an advertising campaign developed by the marketing firm of Wells, Rich, Greene under the directorship of Mary Wells Lawrence used since 1977 to promote tourism ...

logo, a 1966 poster for

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...

, and the logos for

DC Comics DC Comics, Inc. ( doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with the ...

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system' ...

and Brooklyn Brewery. In 1954, he also co-founded Push Pin Studios, co-founded ''

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

'' magazine with Clay Felker, and established Milton Glaser, Inc. In 1969, he produced and designed "Short Subject", commonly known as " Mickey Mouse in Vietnam", a short 16mm anti-war film directed by Whitney Lee Savage (father of Adam Savage). His artwork has been featured in exhibits, and placed in permanent collections in many museums worldwide. Throughout his long career, he designed many posters, publications and architectural designs. He received many awards for his work, including the National Medal of the Arts award from President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

in 2009 and was the first graphic designer to receive this award.

Life and career

Glaser was born in

The Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New ...

, New York City. His parents, Eugene and Eleanor (née Bergman), were

Hungarian Jewish The history of the Jews in Hungary dates back to at least the Kingdom of Hungary, with some records even predating the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE by over 600 years. Written sources prove that Jewish communities lived i ...

immigrants. The family resided in the

South Bronx The South Bronx is an area of the New York City borough of the Bronx. The area comprises neighborhoods in the southern part of the Bronx, such as Concourse, Mott Haven, Melrose, and Port Morris. In the early 1900s, the South Bronx was orig ...

. His father owned a dry-cleaning and tailoring shop; his mother was a homemaker. Glaser took drawing classes with artists

Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual ...

and Moses Soyer before attending the High School of Music & Art in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

After graduating from the

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique ...

in New York City,

Reynold Ruffins Reynold Dash Ruffins (August 5, 1930– July 11, 2021) was an American painter, illustrator, and graphic designer. With Milton Glaser, Edward Sorel, and Seymour Chwast, Ruffins founded Push Pin Studios in 1954. An illustrator of more than twenty ...

, Seymour Chwast,

Edward Sorel Edward Sorel (born Edward Schwartz, 26 March 1929) is an American illustrator, caricaturist, cartoonist, graphic designer and author. His work is known for its storytelling, its left-liberal social commentary, its criticism of reactionary right-w ...

and Glaser founded Push Pin Studios in 1954. Glaser joined after his return from Italy. In 1957, the ''Push Pin Monthly Graphic'' was sent out to friends and clients. The studio's work rejected tradition and favored "reinvigorated interpretations of historical styles". Glaser and

Seymour Chwast Seymour Chwast (born August 18, 1931) is an American graphic designer, illustrator, and type designer. Biography Chwast was born in the Bronx, New York City and in 1949 graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn where he was intr ...

directed Push Pin Studios for twenty years, while it became a guiding reference in the world of graphic design. The studio "redefined and expanded the imprimatur of the designer, illustrator, and visual culture at large". Glaser started his own design firm, Milton Glaser Inc., in 1974 and left Push Pin Studios the following year. In 1983, Glaser formed a partnership with Walter Bernard and established a publication design firm called WBMG in New York City. WBMG has designed more than 50 magazines, newspapers and periodicals around the world. Over his career, Glaser personally designed and illustrated more than 400 posters. Milton drew heavily from early 20th century artists to create his own signature style that consisted of playful, psychedelic graphics with controlled blasts of colors along with silhouettes and bold geometric outlines. His work is displayed in the

Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum housed within the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile. It is one of 19 museums that fall under the wing of the Smithsonian Inst ...

, New York; the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, London; and the

Israel Museum The Israel Museum ( he, מוזיאון ישראל, ''Muze'on Yisrael'') is an art and archaeological museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world’s leading encyclopa ...

, Jerusalem. His work has also been featured in exhibits internationally. He had one-man shows at the

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

in Paris and the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...

in New York City. In 1988, Glaser designed the New York City Shelly Fireman-owned Italianate eatery Trattoria Dell'Arte across from

Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th and 57th Streets. Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built ...

. Glaser was the subject of the 2008 documentary film ''To Inform and Delight: The World of Milton Glaser''. A tribute to Glaser, still working in his 90th year, was published in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' in 2019. Glaser died of a

stroke A stroke is a disease, medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemorr ...

and

renal failure Kidney failure, also known as end-stage kidney disease, is a medical condition in which the kidneys can no longer adequately filter waste products from the blood, functioning at less than 15% of normal levels. Kidney failure is classified as eit ...

in New York City on his 91st birthday.

Works

Bob Dylan poster

In 1966, Glaser designed a poster for '' Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits''. It was one of Glaser's first posters. The poster depicts the profile of Dylan's face with psychedelic, swirly hair, with "Dylan" written at the bottom in Baby Teeth, one of Glaser's

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

s. His inspiration for the poster was

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

's 1957 ''

Self-Portrait A self-portrait is a representation of an artist that is drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by that artist. Although self-portraits have been made since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid-15th century tha ...

''; and

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

, "That was an influence for the colors and shapes in the picture." Six million posters have been printed and distributed, and sell for hundreds of dollars as collectables.

I Love New York logo

One of Glaser's most recognizable works is his

logo. In the mid-1970s, New York City's crime rate was up and the city was widely perceived to be dangerous and was on the verge of bankruptcy. In 1977, the State of New York hired advertising agency Wells Rich Greene and Milton Glaser to design a logo to increase tourism. It was Glaser who came up with the design while sitting in the back of a taxi cab on the way to the meeting. The logo consists of the capital "I" and a red heart, stacked on top of the letters "NY" in American Typewriter typeface, symbolizing New York. His inspiration for the logo was

Robert Indiana Robert Indiana (born Robert Clark; September 13, 1928 – May 19, 2018) was an American artist associated with the pop art movement. His iconic image LOVE was first created in 1964 in the form of a card which he sent to several friends and acq ...

's LOVE design, with the four letters stacked on top of each other. "Glaser loved New York so much that he gave his work to the city for free, hoping it would become public property." The logo earns New York state $30 million each year and has become a pop culture icon. It is reproduced on everything from coffee cups to T-shirts and hats. The logo can be seen everywhere in New York City. Robert Indiana's work influenced Glaser who in turn has inspired other designers to create variations on the layout, for example "I Heart Radio". The state has filed nearly 3,000 objections against them. After the

September 11 terrorist attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

, the logo became even more of a symbol, creating unity between the public. Glaser designed a modified version saying, "I Love New York More Than Ever", in response to the attacks. The red heart has a small blackened and burned area along one edge to symbolize the attack on the

World Trade Center site The World Trade Center site, often referred to as "Ground Zero" or "the Pile" immediately after the September 11 attacks, is a 14.6-acre (5.9 ha) area in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The site is bounded by Vesey Street to the north ...

''New York'' magazine

In 1968, Glaser and Clay Felker founded ''New York'' magazine. The magazine was about being on the reader's side, "it was about what was happening in New York City at the time." One example of this is "The Underground Gourmet". It was about cheap restaurants in New York. Glaser wrote the article for seven years with Jerome Snyder. It was one of the most popular columns in the magazine. ''New York'' "became the model for the city magazines, and stimulated a host of imitations". Glaser left the magazine in 1977. In 1993, thanks to Glaser's history with ''New York'', he was tapped by John F. Kennedy Jr., in conjunction with his partner

Michael J. Berman Michael J. Berman is an American businessman, responsible for founding '' George'' magazine with John F. Kennedy, Jr. in 1995. Due to Kennedy's fame, it was the largest magazine launch that year. At the time of the launch, Berman owned a New York ...

, to work with them to create the image they were seeking for their start-up magazine ''George''.

Typography

In 1970, Glaser designed his namesake typeface
Glaser Stencil
which drew inspiration from geometric sans-serif fonts such as Futura and Avant Garde.

Fonts Designed

* Art Decko ( Photo Lettering Inc.) Chwast, Seymour, The Push Pin Graphic, A Quarter Century of Innovative Design and Illustration,'' Chronicle Books, San Francisco, California, 2004, p. 249-50. * Babycurls ( Photo Lettering Inc.) * Babyfat (1964, Photo Lettering Inc.) * Babyteeth (1966, Photo Lettering Inc.) * Eightway (1964, Photo Lettering Inc.), with George Leavitt * Futura Stencil (1970, Mergenthaler) * Glazer Stencil (1970, Mergenthaler) * Houdini (1969, Photo Lettering Inc.) * Rainbow! (1987, Photo Lettering Inc.) * Stencil Select (1970, Mergenthaler)

Pomilio Blumm

In 2019, Glaser redesigned the historical ' rhino' logo of the Italian communication agency Pomilio Blumm. Stemming from this experience, a documentary titled ''A Social Design story'' has been produced, available on

Amazon Prime Video Amazon Prime Video, also known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered as a standalone service or as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service pr ...

USA and UK.

Awards

In 2004, Glaser won a

National Design Award The American National Design Awards, founded in 2000, are funded and awarded by Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. There are seven official design categories, and three additional awards. Supplemental awards can be given at the discretio ...

Lifetime Achievement from the

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum housed within the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile. It is one of 19 museums that fall under the wing of the Smithsonian Inst ...

for his profound and meaningful long-term contributions to the contemporary practice of design. In 2009, he was awarded the

National Medal of Arts The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. A prestigious American honor, it is the highest honor given to artists and arts patrons ...

by President

and First Lady

Michelle Obama Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She was the first African-American woman to serve in this position. She is married t ...

at the White House. Glaser is the first

to have received this award. Glaser was honored as one of The New Jewish Home's 2015 Eight Over Eighty honorees.

Selected works

File:Brookylnbrewery.svg, Brooklyn Brewery logo File:DC Bullet (SVG).svg, DC Comics logo, 1977–2005 File:LaG-Arts-logo.svg, LaGuardia High School logo File:Stony Brook University logo.svg, Stony Brook University logo File:SBSH logo.gif, Stony Brook Southampton logo

Publications

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Glaser, Milton 1929 births 2020 deaths AIGA medalists Album-cover and concert-poster artists American graphic designers American illustrators American magazine founders American magazine publishers (people) American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Cooper Union alumni Deaths from kidney failure The High School of Music & Art alumni Jewish American artists Logo designers National Design Award winners New York (magazine) people Artists from New York City United States National Medal of Arts recipients Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna alumni Compasso d'Oro Award recipients Fulbright alumni