A stroke and kidney failure ended the life of Milton Glaser on Friday, the day the New York designer and illustrator, visual philosopher, fulfilled 91 years. His heart, at least the one he gave to New York in 1977 creating the ‘I ♥ NY’ which is one of the most iconic logos in history, it will never stop beating.
All of us make our mark. It does not have to be seen globally. Human kindness is a mark. It is lasting. But once in a while someone creates something that does transcend & becomes part of our culture. Milton Glaser died today. He made this graphic. It will live on & on after him. pic.twitter.com/ALUqUhEHKE
— Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) June 27, 2020
That symbol was born when he scribbled on an envelope while riding on the back of a taxi the sketch with the three letters and the symbol and ended up going far beyond the initial idea of collaborating for free in a campaign to attract tourism to the state and to a city in times of economic and social depression. It is, however, only a part, the most popular, of the vast and phenomenal legacy of a man of intense graphic, cultural and ethical footprint; an artist who presented work in solo exhibitions at MoMA or Pompidou and was the first graphic designer recognized with the United States National Medal of Arts (in 2009).
De Glaser is, for example, a 1966 Bob Dylan poster commissioned by CBS to accompany the release the following year of the Duluth bard’s ‘Greatest Hits’ after his serious motorcycle accident. And as would happen later with the New York logo (which he reimagined after the 9/11 attacks), that poster would take on a life of its own. Inspired by a profile of Marcel Duchamp, with Dylan’s hair sinking its roots in ideas from the islamic art centuries ago but unleashed like a psychedelic explosion of waves of colors, and accompanied with the baby teeth typography that Glaser created years before with the muses awakened by a hand-painted sign in Mexico, he would lavish six million copies scattered around the planet.
I got it into my head to do a quick Dylan painting, but who am I kidding? this iconic poster by Milton Glaser is the be all and end all. pic.twitter.com/Yc4XvvPXOP
— Brianna Ashby (@brianna_ashby) May 24, 2020
In that poster the philosophy of Push Pin Studios, which he co-founded in 1954 with former classmates from Cooper Union’s school and where, as a man who would end up signing over 400 posters, they were encouraged by “the very idea that use anything in the visual history of mankind as an influence”. But his heritage is more extensive. Also lives in the magazine ‘New York’, which he co-founded in 1968; in the School of Visual Arts where he taught for decades; thanks to your own design studio, which he founded in 1974, or in the world of corporate identity and editorial design, to which he contributed from WMBG, a company born in 1983 with which he imagined and reimagined 50 publications from all over the world, including Barcelona, where he collaborated in the redesign of ‘La Vanguardia’.
“An extraordinary life”
Glaser, who was born in the Bronx of Jewish immigrant parents from Hungary, he soon discovered his call. When he was little and one of his older cousins asked him if he wanted to see a bird, and he drew it on a paper bag, he knew what he would dedicate his life to. “Suddenly I almost passed out realizing you could create life with a pencil and at that moment I decided that was how I was going to spend my life “, he recalled in 2014 in an interview with the magazine ‘Inc‘.
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Then came the drawing classes with artists of social realism, high school education with a focus on the arts, two rejections of Pratt and acceptance in Cooper. After the first works, a beca Fullbright that would take him to the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and to the aprendizaje with Giorgio Morandi, which would forever mark his work and his high ethical standards. From the Italian master he learned, for example, that “you teach what you are, not what you say “. And its sediment is felt in other ideas from Glaser, who said that “inspiration is the act of working“, Spoke of the pressing need for ethical behavior,”the idea of doing no harm ”, and believed that “the role of art is to illuminate the real, give people sufficient understanding of the idea that their worldview may not be adjusted or real to to re-evaluate what reality is or they see it in a different way experimentally ”.
In the 2014 interview Glaser also explained that had no interest in business (“All I want to do is do things”). He acknowledged that not all his work was good, but in doing so he added the reflection: “¿¿what’s left but fail, survive and continue? ”. And he affirmed something else: “I have had an extraordinary life”.
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