Milton Glaser, who died last week age 90, is arguably the greatest modern designer – described as the man who “invented the sixties,” certainly many of the images that defined that lively decade.
But his most famous comes from 1976, the iconic (true in this case) “I love New York,” which adorned an ad campaign by Mary Wells’ Wells Rich Greene, charged with reinventing the grimy and dangerous city. Glaser, from the Bronx of Hungarian parentage, was also one of the founders of New York magazine and the designer of its classic masthead.
He designed pretty much everything, including these amazing Signet covers of Shakespeare which I owned and still recall, although I never bothered to find out who did them until now.
Most of his work is here and it’s well worth a long look. Along with some Milton maxims including “tell the truth” – that dates him a bit.
Genius is an overworked description but Glaser was a design genius and a half.
