Among designers, he's a legend. For the rest of the roughly 300 million people in the U.S. (and millions more around the globe), Milton Glaser is probably the most famous designer you've never heard of. The I ♥ NY logo that he designed in 1975 has become part of the popular lexicon, decorating everything from key chains to T-shirts to ashtrays, and inspiring countless knock-offs. One of the most replicated logos in history, Glaser's design represents a kind of cultural shorthand: drycleaners' hangers say We ♥ Our Customers, coffee mugs proclaim I ♥ Allah, and bumper stickers declare Yo ♥ Peru.
"Now it looks so obvious," he says. "It captured the imagination and entered the public consciousness." But in fact it wasn't immediately obvious to Glaser, who had already delivered a final logo to the New York State Commerce Dept. and had it accepted before he had his I ♥ NY epiphany. He scribbled it down on the spot, which happened to be in a taxi, and then had to persuade the city that the new logo was much superior to the old one.
Why was it better? Deceptively simple, powerfully engaging, but above all, straight to the point, the I ♥ NY logo merged design and message perfectly. "Part of my job is to make things look simple," says Glaser. "To achieve a look that's inevitable, that, when you see it, you think it's the only thing that could have been done."
"CLARITY AND CREATIVITY." But as designers know, saying is easier than doing. Glaser's success in doing explains why he's known as one of the most influential figures in graphic design. He has been called both the Picasso and the Michelangelo of the graphic-arts field, a Renaissance man, and the personification of American graphic design. Subtract the hyperbole, and it's still impressive. In a career that spans some 50 years and has extended across a variety of disciplines, Glaser has produced some of the most durable and memorable logos of our time: the Children's Television Network, the World Health Organization's International AIDS Symbol, and Bruegger's Bagels.
And that's but a sliver of his portfolio. He has designed publications -- New York magazine, which he co-founded, among others. He has done book jackets and album covers, posters and restaurant interiors.
"His clarity and creativity are intimately intertwined," says Paul Goldberger, the dean of Parsons School of Design and the architecture critic of The New Yorker. "In his concise and brilliant way, he's able to say something that in someone else's hands is ordinary but in his becomes special and utterly clear."
HYBRID INFLUENCES. "Milton Glaser's contribution to design -- it's unprecedented," says Susan Scandrett, a San Francisco-based design consultant to a number of national magazines such as Outside and Mother Jones. "Perhaps more than anything, he paved the way for design and illustration to be intelligent. An illustration can communicate more than a photograph. Design doesn't just pretty up a page. It's about communicating the message in the most direct and decisive way."
Born in the Bronx in 1929, Glaser attended the High School of Music & Art and won a scholarship to the Cooper Union Art School, both in New York City. While a Fulbright scholar in Italy in 1951, Glaser studied etching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Rather than attach himself to one artistic or cultural movement, he prefers to tap into a rich reservoir of historical and visual references to create something inventive, new, and original.
"My sense is not to be allergic to style or mores in time," he says. "I see it as a continuous conversation. My resources run deep from African art to Japanese watercolor to Modernism to Dada."
FACE OF BOB. Glaser first came on the scene in 1954, when he co-founded the groundbreaking Push Pin Studios with his Cooper Union classmates, designer sand illustrators Seymour Chwast and Edward Sorel. Push Pin's revival of the union of art and typography, as well as its use of cultural references and visual language, came to both define the aesthetic of graphic design by merging genres and styles into something new and fresh. And following World War II, when photography was highly popular in design work, Push Pin greatly revolutionized the direction of modern visual style by reviving the drawn illustration.
Push Pin's reputation for inventiveness through the use of clashing historical references is perhaps best seen in the poster that Glaser created for singer Bob Dylan as an album insert in 1967. Inspired by a self-portrait of Marcel Duchamp and Islamic painting, Dylan is shown in silhouette with a shock of wavy psychedelic hair that perfectly captured the times and the singer's counterculture message.
During this time, Glaser also helped launched New York with legendary editor Clay Felker. The magazine elevated the intersection between design and text, and became the model for scores of city magazines across the country.
RICH ROSTER. At the height of Push Pin's success, Glaser left and founded his own Milton Glaser Design Studio in 1974. "At the time, [Push Pin] seemed like a small compass," he says. "I became imprisoned by its reputation, and I wanted to try and invent a new ambiguous reputation."
Both on his own and with the firm that he established with Walter Bernard in 1983, WBMG, Glaser has designed and redesigned newspapers and magazines around the world, including The Washington Post and Spain's La Vanguardia, and created album covers for the entire roster of Tomato Records artists, including Louis Armstrong and Sam Rivers. What Glaser's eclectic works share is a simplicity and directness that has only increased over the years.
At 76, Glaser remains prolific, with 8 to 10 long-term clients, including Target (TGT), The Theatre for the New Audience, and Tomato Records. He has a busy schedule of upcoming projects and no interest in retiring. "Nothing fills me with more dread than living in a condo on some golf course," he says. "I love my work. I'm thinking faster than I ever thought, and my work is totally compelling."
Perman is a staff writer for BusinessWeek Online in New York
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