Milton Glaser

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Milton Glaser

• Graphic Designer

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Credits

• First I must give credit Chip Kidd a Graphic
  Designer and his interview with Milton Glaser.
• This interview gave me more information on Milton
  Glaser then just his interviews that can be found
  on You Tube.

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Milton Glaser as a child.

• I was born in 1929, a critical year in the United
  States at the beginning of the Depression. And I
  grew up in the Bronx, in a radical left-wing
  neighborhood that was called Little Moscow by
  people outside of the area. It was a climate of
  left-wing activity, the beginnings of the labor
  movement, the beginnings of the civil rights
  movement, in the first integrated housing in the
  U.S.
• I feel this has an impact on who Milton is. We
  are the sum of our parts.
• (Gesture theory in art.)

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Milton age Five

• How do you know at the age of five that thats
  what you want to be-what have you seen, what have
  you heard? Its very mysterious. Particularly
  when this decision occurs in early childhood,
  with nothing to do with anything except the sense
  of pleasure I derived from doing it. I was
  overcome I just wanted to do nothing else.
• ( Here Milton talks about the desire to be an
  artist at that age, and about his parents.)

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Milton's Parents

• Yes. I tell the story At the age of five I made
  that decision. In my parents I had the perfect
  combination-a resistant father and an encouraging
  mother. My mother convinced me I could do
  anything. And my father said, Prove it. He
  didnt think I could make a living. Resistance
  produces muscularity. And it was the perfect
  combination because I could use my mothers
  belief to overcome my fathers resistance. My
  father was a kind of a metaphor for the world,
  because if you cant overcome a fathers
  resistance youre never going to be able to
  overcome the worlds resistance. Its much better
  than having completely supportive parents or
  completely resistant parents.

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Milton age Eight.

• When I was eight I had rheumatic fever and I was
  in bed for almost a year. And my life consisted
  of working on a wooden board that my mother would
  bring to me-it was a plank about this tall-and
  several pounds of clay. And every day I would
  make either a city or an army, or animals or
  figures, and so on. At the end of every day I
  would pound them down hits table and I would
  spend the night dreaming of starting again the
  next day. And I realized that art had redeemed my
  life, because I was never bored for a minute that
  whole year.

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Milton age Twelve

• I never had a construct in my mind what being an
  artist meant obviously, you have to learn that
  later. And I never had an idea that painting was
  a way for me to be in the world, because I
  couldnt imagine the idea of making things to
  sell to people. I just couldnt get that-you make
  a painting and someone buys it because its shown
  in the gallery. But I loved the idea of making
  things that were useful to people. And I started
  out doing comic strips, like most people do.

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So why not become a cartoonist?

• I would have loved that, and I thought that was
  what I was going to be. Early on I had obtained
  the name of a cartoonist-what was his name?
  Sheffield?-who was a cousin of somebody. So I
  took my comic strips down to 42nd Street, where
  he had an atelier-a room about half this
  size-covered with cigarette butts. I went up to
  see him I was wearing a blue double-breasted
  suit and a vest, and it was a day like
  this-eighty-five degrees-midsummer.
• I was twelve and I got on the subway from the
  Bronx. Sweating. I came there about two hours
  early, I was so excited. I lugged this portfolio
  up to see him. And he was smoking a cigarette,
  doing these dreadful drawings, whatever he was
  doing, and he opened my portfolio and he looked
  at it, and he said, Kid, the next time you do
  one of these strips, use a ruler for the boxes.
• That was it. (MY comment WOW!)

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Milton age Fourteen

• But thats what I wanted to do I wanted to be a
  cartoonist. I went to an extraordinary high
  school here, the New York High School of Music
  and Art, which in those days was fantastically
  interesting and sophisticated. I met kids who
  were from every kind of family in the city,
  because it was, I suppose, a meritocracy
  Everybody who had the talent got in.

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New York High School of Music and Art

• It was a marvelous school, very high academic
  grading you did art or music for half a year,
  four hours a day. It was fantastic. I remember
  the first day I went to school, the teacher was
  giving a lecture on Cezanne. I was fourteen or
  fifteen years old. And by the time I got through
  with music and art, I realized there was another
  kind of world that went beyond my dream of being
  a cartoonist. I didnt know exactly what it was
  yet, that there was such a thing called design.
• (Wow enter the world of design.)

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Entering the world of Design

• Chip Kidd So you did learn about design at that
  point.
• Milton Glaser Yes, I did, they had courses on
  poster design, and other kinds of design, as well
  as painting.
• Chip Kidd And dealing with type?
• Milton Glaser The beginning of typography, not a
  lot of it, because there werent enough people
  teaching it in those days.
• Chip Kidd I wouldnt think so.
• Milton Glaser So at that time I began to see
  that there was a range of opportunities. In
  between cartooning and painting there was a lot
  of other stuff going on that also interested me.
  After I got out of school, I flunked the entrance
  examination to Pratt.

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Interesting

• Milton will create a type face of his own later.
  Glaser stencil, 1967 a font family tree displays
  different foundries versions of basically the
  same typeface design.

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So he flunked the entrance examination to Pratt

• I was promised a scholarship but I flunked the
  entrance examination, so I went to the dean and I
  said, You promised me a scholarship. He said,
  I cant give you a scholarship if you cant even
  pass the entrance exam. So I said, What can I
  do, I didnt apply to anyplace else. So he says,
  Well, I have an idea. Take the night school
  entrance examination. Youll come to school,
  youll go for a year, then Ill give you a
  scholarship to the daytime. So I took the
  nighttime examination, and I failed that. Laughs

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WHY?

• Chip Kidd Wait a minute. What are you failing,
  are you failing math, English, what?
• Milton Glaser No, the art exam!
• Chip Kidd What?!
• Milton Glaser Yes, the art exam. It was a
  series of five questions that you filled out I
  thought I did them rather well.
• Chip Kidd That seems impossible to me.
• Milton Glaser No, its not. Thats what
  happened, who knows why.

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Now what!

• So then I went to work, because I hadnt applied
  to any other school, and I took a job at a
  packaging company. I also attended the Art
  Students League at the same time. Then I learned
  a little about professional life-I was an
  apprentice, and at the end of the year, they made
  me the art director of this packaging outfit. But
  of course I was doing the same thing whether they
  called me an art director or an apprentice-I was
  wrapping packages and schlepping them to the post
  office. But it gave me a real sense of what I
  wanted to be doing professionally. Then I went to
  Cooper Union. And there I got a wonderful
  education.

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Cooper Union

• At Cooper, I got a terrific grounding in
  typography, and in design, and I continued
  painting. Cooper really is a superb school.
• It was full of interesting people and completely
  devoted teachers, teaching out of passion and
  devotion to their ideals. In fact, my education
  in New York has been superb. I got the most
  fabulous education in this city. It really shaped
  my life. But after that I got a Fulbright, and
  went to Bologna for a couple of years, and I
  studied etching with Giorgio Morandi. That was a
  big influence on me. After I was married I went
  back and lived in Rome and did lithography for a
  while, but I came back here and started Pushpin.

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Recap

• Born in 1929
• Went to school at New York City High School of
  Music and Art
• Graduated from Copper Union in 1951
• Got a Fulbright scholarship and went to the
  Academy of fine Arts in Bologna, Italy.
• In 1954 Push Pin Studios is founded

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Push Pin Studios

• Push Pin Studios was started in 1954 with
  Miltons classmates from Copper Union Seymour
  Chwast, Ed Sorel and Reynold Ruffins.
• Chip Kidd When you first started Pushpin, did
  you find it hard to work up a big client base?
  Was it hard to get started?

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Getting Started

• Yes, it was, but not any harder than it is for
  anyone just entering the field. We had the great
  advantage of having the little publication we
  produced-at first the Pushpin Almanac and then
  the Pushpin Graphic. That was, in retrospect, a
  tremendous device for getting clients.
• It was tremendously beneficial to us. It really
  was the single thing that accounted, I think, for
  our success. Because it was constant. It came out
  every month or two, whereas everybody else would
  send out a promotion and then wouldnt send out
  anything for a year. The frequency of the Pushpin
  Graphic made a big difference.

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Milton Glasers Art Style

• Glaser's work is characterized by directness,
  simplicity and originality. He uses any medium or
  style to solve the problem at hand. His style
  ranges wildly from primitive to avant garde in
  his countless book jackets, album covers,
  advertisements and direct mail pieces and
  magazine illustrations.

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1966

• Bob Dylan with the kaleidoscope hair, poster for
  CBS records, that was included in the singer's
  greatest hits album, 1966.

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1968

• In 1968, Glaser and Clay Felker founded New York
  Magazine. Glaser was president and design
  director until 1977 (as well as its underground
  gourmet - writing about good, cheap restaurants
  in N Y). publication design had become a big
  interest.
• Poster on right
• olivetti ad, 1968

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• CHIP KIDD You write in Art is Work that the very
  famous I Heart New York logo you designed was
  originally proposed as something else.
• It was just a little typographical solution with
  two lozenges and a word in it, two ovals, and the
  word inside it it was not in any way
  distinguished. But I always thought the whole
  thing was going to be a three-month campaign.

It was like one of those things you bang out
because it didnt seem to merit any more
attention.
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But even so, I said, This the first solution
isnt good enough, And I tell the anecdote. You
just never understand what makes certain ideas
that you have cling to people. I have to say that
when you do something that you really feel is
useful-when you have a positive social effect-it
makes you feel great. Milton Glaser did this
logo Pro-Bono (No Money)
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9/11 adaptation of the logo

• I woke up one day, a few days after 9/11. I
  thought, you know, I love New York isnt the
  story anymore. Something happened. And I realized
  that what had happened was an injury, like when a
  friend of yours, somebody you love, gets terribly
  sick. You suddenly become conscious of how much
  you care for them. Thats the inevitable
  consequence of somebody you have affection for.
  And I realized that my feeling about the city had
  deepened

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9 -11 Logo

• The black mark on the heart represents where the
  trade center had once been. Milton called in a
  lot of favors from old friends to have this
  poster produced and distribute all the city.
• Pro bono again many people worked for free to get
  this new logo into circulation.

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Could we use it in a fundraiser?

• I said, Great, and Ill sign some for you, and
  you can offer it on the air to raise money. So
  they offered it for a hundred dollars unsigned or
  a thousand signed. That little piece of dreck!
• And they raised 190,000.
• Every penny that was made on it went to either
  the firemens fund, or to restore the antenna on
  WNYC or something.

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No good deed goes unpunished.

• Long story yet as an artist you must be careful.
  Seems Milton had no right to use the logo the way
  that he did. New York City Commerce Department at
  one point wanted to use the logo without the
  black mark. Milton said no. They let him know he
  was in violation of a trade mark. Got ready to
  sue him. But in the end dropped it and lets just
  forget about us getting ready to sue you for
  using that logo that way.
• ( This was interesting to read about, but in the
  end it had a happy ending. That poster raised a
  190,000.)

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Recap

• Pushpin Studios 1954 - 1974
• Bob Dylan poster 1966
• Glaser stencil 1967
• New York magazine 1968 - 1977
• I heart New York Logo 1973
• Milton Glaser, Inc 1974

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Milton Glaser, Inc
He started his own studio, Milton Glaser, Inc, in
1974. This led to his involvement with an
increasingly wide diversity of projects, ranging
from the design of New York Magazine, of which he
was a co-founder, to a 600 foot mural for the
Federal Office Building in Indianapolis.
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So much about Milton

• Throughout his career he has had a major impact
  on contemporary illustration and design. His work
  has won numerous awards from Art Directors Clubs,
  the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the
  Society of Illustrators and the Type Directors
  Club. In 1979 he was made Honorary Fellow of the
  Royal Society of Arts and his work is included in
  the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert
  Museum, the Israel Museum and the Musee de
  l'affiche in Paris. Glaser has taught at both the
  School of Visual Arts and at Cooper Union in New
  York City. He is a member of Alliance Graphique
  International (AGI).

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(No Transcript)
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He has so many posters done.
This one from the world health organization's
international AIDS symbol and poster, 1987
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• hummingbird,
• celebrity created holiday cards -world hunger
  year, 2003
• inside may your holiday be full of beautiful
  surprises

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Any plans to retire?

• Oh god, no. There is nothing I fear more than the
  idea of having to retire. I fear retirement more
  than death.

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any advice for the young ?

• it's a tough business,you have to be amazingly
  consistent and persistent.you have to work like
  hell.you cannot become an excellent practioneer
  without constantly working hard all your life. it
  is not an easy way to earn your money.and... you
  have to be well trained and you have not to be
  narrow to references, because everybody else is
  doing that at the same time.the richness of
  understanding comes from the deep historical,
  philosophical idea.

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Identity Projects
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Full Credits

• CHIP KIDD
• http//www.believermag.com/issues/200309/?readint
  erview_glaser
• Wikipedia
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Glaser
• Designboom
• http//www.designboom.com/eng/interview/glaser.htm
  l
• Milton Glaser Inc.
• http//www.miltonglaser.com/pages/identproj/id_ind
  ex.html

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Movies can be found at.

• http//testing123.info/milton_glaser.html
• This report was done in 2008
• By Gloria Cochran for class project
• CGR 230 Modesto Junior College.