MILTON
GLASER – OBITUARY
This is a summary of the obituary by Deyan Sudjic that
was published in the Guardian newspaper of 11th July 2020.
Milton
Glaser
The American graphic designer Milton Glaser was born
on 26th June 1929 and died on 26th June 2020. He is chiefly remembered for the ‘I love NY’
logo which he designed.
Sudjic describes Glaser’s ‘I love NY’ logo as ‘entirely
characteristic of his approach to design, and at the same time an atypical
one-off’. In 1976, New York State had commissioned
an advertising agency – Wells Rich Green – to produce a campaign to turn around
public perceptions of New York and attract tourists. Glaser’s initial sketch of the ‘I love NY’
logo was done on the back of an envelope in a taxi: it is now in the permanent collection
of the Museum of Modern Art. The logo is
distinctive of Glaser’s ability to blend words and images to send a powerful
message. It also shows his ‘magpie-like
way of picking up and repurposing visual ideas that were already in the air’. Sudjic writes: ‘he was not a plagiarist, but
he was exceptionally fluent in making use of the many languages of design’. Glaser donated the ‘I love NY’ logo and
received no payment for it at any time. ‘It
was a love letter to a city that had allowed him to go to college without
paying tuition fees, and in which he lived and worked for most of his life’. Glaser was born in the Bronx, New York
City. His parents were Hungarian-Jewish
immigrants who owned a dry cleaning and tailoring shop.
Sudjic concludes his obituary thus: ‘Glaser reminds us
of a US that we can admire. He designed
its logos, its magazines and record covers, its cafes, its posters and its book
jackets’.
