Milton Glaser

(b New York, 26 June 1929). American graphic designer and illustrator. At the age of 13 he began taking life classes with Moses and Raphael Soyer in New York and subsequently attended the High School of Music and Art, New York (1943-6). He studied painting, typography and illustration at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York (1948-51), with the aim of becoming a comic-strip artist and spent two years (1952-3) at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna, working under Giorgio Morandi and drawing extensively from plaster casts. Drawing remained central to his subsequent career in graphic design. Important early influences were the prints of F?lix Valloton and Art Nouveau decoration, and he particularly admired Picasso's gift for working in both an abstract and realistic vein. In 1954 he founded, with Seymour Chwast, Edward Sorel (b 1929) and Reynold Ruffins (b 1930), the Push Pin Studios in New York. In 1955, with Chwast and Ruffins, he became founder-editor of Push Pin Graphics magazine. Rejecting the precisionist school of graphic design then prevailing, Glaser introduced an eclectic, narrative style full of historical references that amalgamated illustration with vintage typography. His flattened, heavily outlined images were borrowed at random from the Italian Old Masters, 19th-century illustration, comics, advertising and all manner of visual ephemera. He designed posters, record-sleeves, book illustrations, magazine covers and small advertisements in a witty, inventive style characterized by miscellaneous juxtapositions and revivalist frivolity (e.g. poster of antique head for the School of Visual Arts, New York, offset lithograph, 1964; London, V&A).

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(1929- )

A well-known American graphic designer, illustrator, and art director who is closely associated with the celebrated Push Pin Studios in New York and Push Pin Graphics magazine, Glaser has had a long and distinguished design career that has been highly influential on both sides of the Atlantic. He has also worked in furniture, product, and interior design. He studied painting, typography, and illustration at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York from 1948 to 1951, before moving to the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy, where he studied under the celebrated painter Giorgio Morandi from 1952 to 1953. After returning to the United States he founded the Push Pin Studios in New York in 1954 with Seymour Chwast, Edward Sorel, and Reynold Ruffins, establishing Push Pin Graphics magazine with Schwast and Ruffins in the following year. His graphic style at that time was eclectic and original, drawing on a wide variety of sources and style ranging from the Italian Renaissance to comic strips and visual ephemera. Push Pin Studios was a driving force in the advertising during the 1960s and 1970s, during which period Glaser absorbed the bright colours and bold forms of Op and Pop Art typified in his iconic Dylan poster of 1967. Art director and vice-president for the New York Magazine from 1968 to 1976, he also played a key design role in many other magazines including Paris Match, the Village Voice, and Esquire. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris held a major retrospective of Push Pin Studio graphics in 1970 and Glaser's own work was celebrated in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1975. Glaser left Push Pin Studios in 1974, setting up Milton Glaser Inc. to follow up other his design interests—including furniture, product, and interiors—alongside his fertile interest in print. Key professional bodies in which he has held influential positions include the vice-presidency of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and presidency of the International Design Conference in Aspen in 1989.

Glaser, Milton, 1929–, widely considered America's preeminent graphic designer of the last half of the 20th cent., b. New York City. After graduating (1951) from New York's Cooper Union Art School, he studied in Italy. In 1954 Glaser and three partners founded a groundbreaking New York design firm, the Push Pin Studio. From that point on, Glaser's ever-changing design work, which draws widely on art history, has had enormous international influence. He left Push Pin in 1974, opened his own design firm, and later (1984) became a partner in another New York studio. He was art director of New York magazine (1968–76) and the Village Voice newspaper (1975–77) and was responsible for the design of many other publications. Over the course of his long career, his creations have tended to change from hard-edged Pop and psychadelic designs to a softer, more expressionistic or naturalistic style. Glaser's work includes the creation of many posters, notably the iconic Bob Dylan silhouette (1966); book and record covers; book illustrations; type; corporate logos; interiors; and architectural projects. One of his most famous designs is the 1976 “I Love New York” logo.

Bibliography

See his The Milton Glaser Poster Book (1977), Milton Glaser: Graphic Design (rev. ed. 1998), and Art Is Work: Graphic Design, Interiors, Objects, and Illustrations (2000); S. Bass, Six Chapters in Design (1997) and P. B. Meggs, A History of Graphic Design (1997).

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