Milton Glaser, an essential visual architect of the second half of the 20th century, died on Friday, his 91st birthday. His striking poster of Bob Dylan, which was included as an insert in the 1967 Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits album, was a quickly disseminated primer on pop art. Glaser later told Smithsonian Magazine that his wild psychedelic colors were a response to the then-modernist “less is more” mantra. “Just enough is more,” he said.
In 1968, Glaser and Clay Felker purchased what had been a Sunday supplement to the New York Herald Tribune newspaper as it was going out of business. They rebranded it as the stand-alone glossy New York Magazine. Glaser stayed at the publication as president and design director until 1977. The logo remains.
That same year, when New York City was trying to drum up the tourist business in an era of “Ford to City: Drop Dead” headlines, Glaser sketched the now ubiquitous “I Love NY” logo in crayon, on the back of an envelope, while riding a taxi. He did the work pro bono, and it has since been reappropriated countless times. After the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, Glaser amended the original design to read “Now More Than Ever,” and the red heart of “Love” had a bruise on it.
The Bronx-born Glaser was a product of some of New York’s finest free educational institutions, having attended the High School of Music & Art (which merged with School of the Performing Arts in 1984 to become The Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts) and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. In the early 1950s he worked at Vogue Magazine then formed his own studio. Among his early triumphs were a series of book covers for the Signet Classic Shakespeare series.
Glaser’s resume is a never-ending scroll of “hey, I know that!” images, including logos for museums and art institutions, brands like Brooklyn Brewery and DC Comics, posters for Mad Men and Angels in America, and a string of famous book covers.
Design enthusiasts took to Twitter to celebrate the man and his work.
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