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R.I.P To Iconic I Heart New York Graphic Designer Milton Glaser Dies At 91
Glaser in his studio building — where New York had been founded nearly five decades earlier — in 2014. Photo: Neville Elder/Corbis via Getty Images
R.I.P Iconic ” I Heart New York ” Graphic Designer Milton Glaser.
A street vendor holds up an “I ♥ NY” t-shirt in 2009.
Milton Glaser died today, on his 91st birthday, of natural causes after an extremely long and productive career. Around our office, of course, he will forever be one of the small team of men and women who, in the late ’60s, yanked New York out of the newspaper morgue and turned it into a great American magazine. In 1966, the Esquire alumnus Clay Felker had been editing the Sunday supplement of the New York Herald Tribune — which was called New York — when the paper shut down.
It came back for a few months at a merged entity called the World Journal Tribune, until that paper also crashed and burned. Over the next year, Felker and Glaser devised a plan to reincarnate it on its own, as a weekly glossy magazine, using the best and most inventive writers from the Trib and Esquire and various other places. It was a near-starvation operation when they launched in the first week of April 1968, and it was also a hit. New York soon became the hottest and liveliest magazine in America, in large part because Glaser’s design was crisp and understated and bright and poppy.
He drew the logo appearing at the top of this very webpage, which has been tweaked over the years but is fundamentally still the same one that appeared on the cover of Vol. 1, No. 1. (And on this really wonderful 1967 poster that he drew for the launch). – NYMag
Illustration: Milton Glaser/New York Magazine
ABOUT MILTON GLASER
Born in 1929, Milton Glaser was educated at the High School of Music and Art and the Cooper Union art school in New York and, via a Fulbright Scholarship, the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy. He co-founded the revolutionary Pushpin Studios in 1954, founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker in 1968, established Milton Glaser, Inc. in 1974, and teamed with Walter Bernard in 1983 to form the publication design firm WBMG.
Throughout his career, Glaser has been a prolific creator of posters and prints. His artwork has been featured in exhibits worldwide, including one-man shows at both the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums. Glaser also is a renowned graphic and architectural designer with a body of work ranging from the iconic logo to complete graphic and decorative programs for the restaurants in the World Trade Center in New York.
Glaser is an influential figure in both the design and education communities and has contributed essays and granted interviews extensively on design. Among many awards throughout the years, he received the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, for his profound and meaningful long-term contribution to the contemporary practice of design.
* Excerpted from CSD, August/September, 1999 — "Milton Glaser: Always One Jump Ahead" by Patrick Argent
Mugs with Milton Glaser’s I ♥ NY logo are offered for sale in a souvenir shop. Photo by Christina Horsten/picture alliance/dpa/Getty Images.
MILTON GLASER, INC.
Milton Glaser, Inc. was established in 1974. The work produced at this Manhattan studio encompasses a wide range of design disciplines. In the area of print graphics, the studio produces identity programs for corporate and institutional marketing purposes — including logos, stationery, brochures, signage, and annual reports.
In the field of environmental and interior design, the firm has conceptualized and site-supervised the fabrication of numerous products, exhibitions, interiors and exteriors of restaurants, shopping malls, supermarkets, hotels, and other retail and commercial environments.
Glaser is also personally responsible for the design and illustration of more than 300 posters for clients in the areas of publishing, music, theater, film, institutional and civic enterprise, as well as those for commercial products and services.
Graphic Designer Milton Glaser’s I ♥ NY, designed for a New York tourism campaign in 1977, now greets arrivals at baggage claim at the new LaGuardia Airport terminal in New York City. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Glaser’s graphic and architectural commissions include the logo (which has been described as ‘the most frequently imitated logo design in human history’), commissioned by the state of New York in 1976; the design of a 600-foot mural for the New Federal Office Building in Indianapolis in 1974; the complete graphic and decorative programs for the restaurants in the World Trade Center, New York, as well as the design of the Observation Deck and Permanent Exhibition for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1975. He has also designed a number of architectural projects including Sesame Place, a children’s educational play park in Pennsylvania, 1981-83.
For a period of fifteen years, Milton Glaser was involved with the re-design of a principal American supermarket chain, The Grand Union Company, a project that included all the company architecture, interiors, and packaging. He was responsible for the interior design and concept for the 1987-88 Triennale di Milano International Exhibition in Milan, Italy, on the theme of “World Cities and the Future of the Metropolis”.
Milton Glaser’s updated I ♥ NY logo (2001). Courtesy of Milton Glaser.
In 1987, Mr. Glaser was responsible for the graphic program of the Rainbow Room complexes for the Rockefeller Center Management Corporation, New York. Also in 1987, he designed the World Health Organization’s International AIDS Symbol and poster. From 1986–1989, he was responsible for the graphic design, theming, and signage for Franklin Mills, a retail mall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and in 1988, he completed the exterior, interior, and all graphic elements of Trattoria dell’Arte, one of several New York restaurants he has designed. In 1990, Milton Glaser, Inc. was responsible for the overall conceptualization and interior design of New York Unearthed, a museum located in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. In 1993, he designed the logo for Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, Angels in America. The list goes on and on. At present, Milton acts as a design consultant for the companies featured in the case studies section among others like Target Corp.
WORLD-WIDE EXHIBITIONS
In addition to commercial enterprises, Milton Glaser’s work has been exhibited world-wide. Most notable are the following exhibitions: a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1975), and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1977), as well as the Lincoln Center Gallery, New York (1981), and Houghton Gallery, The Cooper Union, New York (1984).
In 1989, Mr. Glaser had many exhibitions in Italy. One was a one-man show of posters at the Vicenza Museum, and another, “Giorgio Morandi/Milton Glaser,” at the Galleria Communale d’Arte Moderna in Bologna. In 1991, he was commissioned by the Italian government to create an exhibition in tribute to the Italian artist, Piero della Francesca, for part of the celebrations on the occasion of his 500th anniversary.
This show opened in Arezzo, Italy and one year later (under the sponsorship of Campari) moved to Milan. In 1994, The Cooper Union, Mr. Glaser’s alma mater, hosted the show in New York. In 1992, An exhibition of drawings titled “The Imaginary Life of Claude Monet” opened at Nuages Gallery, Italy, and in 1995, an adapted version of this show was exhibited in Japan’s Creation Gallery. 1995 also brought a Glaser exhibition to the Art Institute of Boston. In 1997, the Suntory Museum, Japan, mounted a major retrospective of The Pushpin Studios, featuring past and present works by Milton Glaser and other Pushpin artists. A major retrospective of his work opened in February, 2000 at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice.
Milton Glaser, Dylan (1967), a promotional poster for the album Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. Courtesy of Milton Glaser.