Milton Glaser 101
Being a life-long New Yorker, I should probably be ashamed of myself for not having known who Milton Glaser was before my Google search earlier today. Glaser (born 1929) is the designer of one of the most pervasive images in pop culture history: the ‘I Love NY’ logo. Oh, that guy! He designed the logo in 1977 for the New York State Department of Commerce and decades later, it’s still damn popular.
I mean, I got excited when I saw one of my posters displayed in Newhouse’s Food.com cafe last December. I can’t imagine what it would be like to walk down 42nd street and see your work at every corner silkscreened on t-shirts, bags, hats, even coffee mugs. In late 2001, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Glaser updated the ‘I Love NY’ logo to the one below. Note the location of the smudge on the heart: it’s ‘downtown,’ as in where the attacks took place.
But that’s not all, folks! Glaser designed an iconic poster of Bob Dylan for CBS Records, the logo that DC Comics used from ‘97 to ‘05, and the logo for Brooklyn Brewery (more hometown love from me for that one, Milton).
Glaser studied at Cooper Union, was a Fulbright Scholar (he spent time in Bologna at the Academy of Fine Arts). Only three years out of Cooper Union, he started a design firm called Push Pin Studios with some of his classmates. In 1968, the man co-founded ‘New York Magazine’ with Clay Felker. He finally opened up his own studio in 1974, and was even design director of ‘Village Voice’ for a few years. In 1983, he started WBMG, which focused on magazine and newspaper design, with Walter Bernard (former art director of ‘Time’). Together, they designed ‘The Washington Post,’ ‘Money,’ ‘The Nation,’ ‘Esquire,’ and many others. Basically, he’s awesome at everything.
I was reading a few interviews he did, and he talks about how difficult it is for someone to look at a piece of his work and definitely say, “That is a Milton Glaser” because he feels that sometimes the designer should be transparent for the sake of the project. Hey, I agree with ya! However, Glaser thinks that the one unifying thread in all his work is a foundation of illustration. He says he never uses a himself to design (!!!!!!!!!!!), but concedes that it’d be impossible to run a studio without someone using computers. He’s had shows in the Museum of Modern Art here in NYC, and at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris; he’s won trillions of awards, including some from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and the Type Directors Club.
Check out this one Glaser print! I have an affinity for the quirky, and this definitely falls in that category. For a mere (HA!) $100 you, too, can own this poster, which was for Allan Heller’s furniture line of plastic, pasta-shaped pillows. (I feel like this room is missing something, but I don’t know what. Oh, of course! A fettucine-shaped loveseat!!).
A promise, Mr. Glaser: I will never again mistake you for “that board game guy.” My bad.