and the city was almost bankrupt. “When people thought about the city, they thought about dirt and danger,” Glaser remembers. “And they wanted a little ad campaign that could somehow change all that.” There was one additional constraint: the print ad had to use the phrase I love New York.
Glaser began by experimenting with fonts, laying out the straightforward slogan in a variety of friendly typefaces. After a few weeks of work, he settled on a charming cursive, with I Love NY set against a plain white background. “I send in my proposal and it’s approved,” Glaser says. “Everybody likes it. And if I were a normal person, I’d stop thinking about the project. But I can’t. Something about it just doesn’t feel right.”
So Glaser continues to fixate on the design, devoting hours to a project that was supposedly finished. “I can’t get the damn problem out of my head,” he says. “And then, about a week after the first concept was approved, I’m sitting in a cab, stuck in traffic. I often carry spare pieces of paper in my pocket, and so I get the paper out and I start to draw. And I’m thinking and drawing and then I get it. I see the whole design in my head. I see the typewriter typeface and the big round red heart smack-dab in the middle. I know that this is how it should go.”
For Glaser, the I ♥ NY ad is a testament to the importance of persistence. Because he refused to stop thinking about the three-word slogan — he kept on redrawing the logo in his mind — his ideas continued to improve. And then, while stuck in the taxi, this steadfast focus led to a new design, a better design. The graphic that he imagined in rush-hour traffic has become the most widely imitated work of graphic art in the world.
This is the power of attention and working memory; it allows us to relentlessly refine our ideas, to continue thinking about our thoughts. “Design is the conscious imposition of meaningful order,” Glaser says. “That sounds grandiose, but it’s just the process of taking an idea that isn’t clear and making it a little more clear. I could tell you a bullshit story about what exactly led to the idea [of I ♥ NY], but the truth is that I don’t know. Maybe I saw a red heart out of the corner of my eye? Maybe I heard the word? But that’s the way it always works. You keep on trying to fix it, to make the design a little bit more interesting, a little bit better. And then, if you’re really stubborn and persistent and lucky, you eventually get there.”
Glaser’s impressive work ethic — his ability to stick with a problem until it surrenders — is itself a skill that took years to develop. In 1951, Glaser was an impressionable twenty-one-year-old with a Fulbright fellowship who was heading to Bologna to study etching with the painter Giorgio Morandi. At the time, Morandi was creating his natura morta paintings, a collection of still lifes that featured empty wine bottles and terra-cotta vases set against a flat gray background. The art was austere, a reflection of Morandi’s disciplined artistic process. He spent months on each canvas, trying to edge closer to the fragile reality he wanted to describe. Sometimes, Morandi would just stare at that random collection of containers and become too intimidated to paint. “I’d watch him get so focused on these incredibly tiny details,” Glaser remembers. “He’d devote weeks of his life to moving a passage of gray a quarter of an inch to the left, or smoothing out the curve of a bottle. It didn’t matter that nobody else would notice. He would notice, and that was more than enough.”
Morandi’s obsessive dedication to getting the image exactly right changed forever the way Glaser thought about creativity. His old artistic model had been Pablo Picasso — “A raging lunatic genius who wanted to devour the world,” as Glaser puts it — but his new hero was the modest Italian painter. “It was Morandi who taught me about
Glaser began by experimenting with fonts, laying out the straightforward slogan in a variety of friendly typefaces. After a few weeks of work, he settled on a charming cursive, with I Love NY set against a plain white background. “I send in my proposal and it’s approved,” Glaser says. “Everybody likes it. And if I were a normal person, I’d stop thinking about the project. But I can’t. Something about it just doesn’t feel right.”
So Glaser continues to fixate on the design, devoting hours to a project that was supposedly finished. “I can’t get the damn problem out of my head,” he says. “And then, about a week after the first concept was approved, I’m sitting in a cab, stuck in traffic. I often carry spare pieces of paper in my pocket, and so I get the paper out and I start to draw. And I’m thinking and drawing and then I get it. I see the whole design in my head. I see the typewriter typeface and the big round red heart smack-dab in the middle. I know that this is how it should go.”
For Glaser, the I ♥ NY ad is a testament to the importance of persistence. Because he refused to stop thinking about the three-word slogan — he kept on redrawing the logo in his mind — his ideas continued to improve. And then, while stuck in the taxi, this steadfast focus led to a new design, a better design. The graphic that he imagined in rush-hour traffic has become the most widely imitated work of graphic art in the world.
This is the power of attention and working memory; it allows us to relentlessly refine our ideas, to continue thinking about our thoughts. “Design is the conscious imposition of meaningful order,” Glaser says. “That sounds grandiose, but it’s just the process of taking an idea that isn’t clear and making it a little more clear. I could tell you a bullshit story about what exactly led to the idea [of I ♥ NY], but the truth is that I don’t know. Maybe I saw a red heart out of the corner of my eye? Maybe I heard the word? But that’s the way it always works. You keep on trying to fix it, to make the design a little bit more interesting, a little bit better. And then, if you’re really stubborn and persistent and lucky, you eventually get there.”
Glaser’s impressive work ethic — his ability to stick with a problem until it surrenders — is itself a skill that took years to develop. In 1951, Glaser was an impressionable twenty-one-year-old with a Fulbright fellowship who was heading to Bologna to study etching with the painter Giorgio Morandi. At the time, Morandi was creating his natura morta paintings, a collection of still lifes that featured empty wine bottles and terra-cotta vases set against a flat gray background. The art was austere, a reflection of Morandi’s disciplined artistic process. He spent months on each canvas, trying to edge closer to the fragile reality he wanted to describe. Sometimes, Morandi would just stare at that random collection of containers and become too intimidated to paint. “I’d watch him get so focused on these incredibly tiny details,” Glaser remembers. “He’d devote weeks of his life to moving a passage of gray a quarter of an inch to the left, or smoothing out the curve of a bottle. It didn’t matter that nobody else would notice. He would notice, and that was more than enough.”
Morandi’s obsessive dedication to getting the image exactly right changed forever the way Glaser thought about creativity. His old artistic model had been Pablo Picasso — “A raging lunatic genius who wanted to devour the world,” as Glaser puts it — but his new hero was the modest Italian painter. “It was Morandi who taught me about
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