says. “So I got out a piece of paper and a charcoal pencil. And you know what I realized? I realized I hadn’t the faintest idea what she looked like. Her image had become fixed in my mind at the age of one or two, and it really hadn’t changed since. I was drawing a picture of a woman who no longer existed.”
But as Glaser stared at her face and then compared what he saw to the black marks on the paper, her appearance slowly came into view. He was able to draw her as she was, and not as he expected her to be. “That sketch taught me something interesting about the mind,” he says. “We’re always looking, but we never really see.” Although Glaser had looked at his mother every single day of his life, he didn’t see her until he tried to draw her. “When you draw an object, the mind becomes deeply, intensely attentive,” Glaser says. “And it’s that act of attention that allows you to really grasp something, to become fully conscious of it. That’s what I learned from my mother’s face, that drawing is really a kind of thinking.”
Milton Glaser looks like a patriarch from a Philip Roth novel. His bare head is ringed with gray hair; oversize glasses rest on the long slope of his nose. Glaser is eighty years old, but he still works in a small studio on East Thirty-Second Street in Manhattan. It’s a cluttered space, the white walls hidden by old art posters, colorful prints for 1980s rock concerts, and art books stacked ten high. Above the front door, chiseled into the glass, is the slogan of the studio: art is work .
For Glaser, the quote summarizes his creative philosophy. “There’s no such thing as a creative type,” he says. “As if creative people can just show up and make stuff up. As if it were that easy. I think people need to be reminded that creativity is a verb, a very time-consuming verb. It’s about taking an idea in your head, and transforming that idea into something real. And that’s always going to be a long and difficult process. If you’re doing it right, it’s going to feel like work.”
Glaser is a living legend in the world of graphic design, having created a number of the most iconic illustrations of the twentieth century, from the I ♥ NY ad campaign to the 1967 Bob Dylan silhouette poster. He came up with the DC Comics logo, cofounded New York magazine, and invented numerous typefaces; he’s designed the interiors of famous restaurants and is responsible for a staggering number of product labels on the supermarket shelves. In recent years, his images have entered the permanent collections of MOMA, the Smithsonian, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
But Glaser almost didn’t make it. In the late 1950s, when he began working on Madison Avenue, photography seemed like the ad form of the future. Although print ads had once relied on trained illustrators — they helped spin the fantasy — the industry was transitioning to staged photo ops. “People like me seemed so antiquated,” Glaser remembers. “Why draw something when you could just take a picture of it, or make a television commercial?” The camera was king; artists were out of work.
As a cofounder of Pushpin Studios, however, Glaser helped rediscover the potential of graphic design. He introduced bright neon colors and a touch of abstraction; he found a way to turn even staid commissions into conceptual works of art. Glaser knew that the most powerful images weren’t the most realistic. Instead of simply trying to represent a thing, Glaser wanted to define it. His perfect visual was more than a picture: it was a summary of associations, a map of thought. It was a picture honed by human attention.
The creative possibilities of graphic art are perfectly captured by Glaser’s most iconic design. In 1975, he accepted an intimidating assignment: create an ad campaign that would rehabilitate the image of New York City. At the time, Manhattan was falling apart. Crime was at an all-time high,
But as Glaser stared at her face and then compared what he saw to the black marks on the paper, her appearance slowly came into view. He was able to draw her as she was, and not as he expected her to be. “That sketch taught me something interesting about the mind,” he says. “We’re always looking, but we never really see.” Although Glaser had looked at his mother every single day of his life, he didn’t see her until he tried to draw her. “When you draw an object, the mind becomes deeply, intensely attentive,” Glaser says. “And it’s that act of attention that allows you to really grasp something, to become fully conscious of it. That’s what I learned from my mother’s face, that drawing is really a kind of thinking.”
Milton Glaser looks like a patriarch from a Philip Roth novel. His bare head is ringed with gray hair; oversize glasses rest on the long slope of his nose. Glaser is eighty years old, but he still works in a small studio on East Thirty-Second Street in Manhattan. It’s a cluttered space, the white walls hidden by old art posters, colorful prints for 1980s rock concerts, and art books stacked ten high. Above the front door, chiseled into the glass, is the slogan of the studio: art is work .
For Glaser, the quote summarizes his creative philosophy. “There’s no such thing as a creative type,” he says. “As if creative people can just show up and make stuff up. As if it were that easy. I think people need to be reminded that creativity is a verb, a very time-consuming verb. It’s about taking an idea in your head, and transforming that idea into something real. And that’s always going to be a long and difficult process. If you’re doing it right, it’s going to feel like work.”
Glaser is a living legend in the world of graphic design, having created a number of the most iconic illustrations of the twentieth century, from the I ♥ NY ad campaign to the 1967 Bob Dylan silhouette poster. He came up with the DC Comics logo, cofounded New York magazine, and invented numerous typefaces; he’s designed the interiors of famous restaurants and is responsible for a staggering number of product labels on the supermarket shelves. In recent years, his images have entered the permanent collections of MOMA, the Smithsonian, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
But Glaser almost didn’t make it. In the late 1950s, when he began working on Madison Avenue, photography seemed like the ad form of the future. Although print ads had once relied on trained illustrators — they helped spin the fantasy — the industry was transitioning to staged photo ops. “People like me seemed so antiquated,” Glaser remembers. “Why draw something when you could just take a picture of it, or make a television commercial?” The camera was king; artists were out of work.
As a cofounder of Pushpin Studios, however, Glaser helped rediscover the potential of graphic design. He introduced bright neon colors and a touch of abstraction; he found a way to turn even staid commissions into conceptual works of art. Glaser knew that the most powerful images weren’t the most realistic. Instead of simply trying to represent a thing, Glaser wanted to define it. His perfect visual was more than a picture: it was a summary of associations, a map of thought. It was a picture honed by human attention.
The creative possibilities of graphic art are perfectly captured by Glaser’s most iconic design. In 1975, he accepted an intimidating assignment: create an ad campaign that would rehabilitate the image of New York City. At the time, Manhattan was falling apart. Crime was at an all-time high,
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