WE ♥ MG
A revolutionary illustrator, graphic designer, art director, visual philosopher and co-founder of New York magazine.
A moment of silence please for Milton Glaser who died of natural causes on June 26, 2020, his 91st birthday.
Four characters, scribbled in red crayon on a scrap of envelope: I ♥ N Y
In 1977 in the backseat of a cab, Glaser created the iconic “I ♥ NY” logo for a New York State tourism campaign. He did the design free of charge, out of love for the city. The logo has since become a central symbol of NYC generating $30 million annually. “I’m flabbergasted by what happened to this little, simple, nothing of an idea,” he told the Village Voice in 2011. “It just demonstrates that every once in a while you do something that can have enormous consequences.”
The torn envelope is a part of the permanent collection at MoMa.
A black silhouette profile from a portrait of Marcel Duchamp mixed with Islamic colors and patterns in psychedelic wave of hair.
In 1966, Glaser designed his famous Bob Dylan poster. It was commissioned by CBS Records and included in every copy of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits album. The design was fresh and modern, combining art history with Pop. Glaser told the New York Times in 2001 that the poster was meant as a freebie to encourage album sales. Like his New York logo, his Bob Dylan design took on a life of its own.
A graphical treatment of the word “Together,” to evoke the idea that during the separation of the pandemic, “we have something in common.”
Even at the time of his death, Milton Glaser was working to connect people through art by creating a symbolic equivalent of the phrase “We’re all in this together.” In this New York Times article, when asked if he had any predictions as to how we come out of this moment, Glaser said “I have no faith in my own prediction. I don’t think there’s any way of telling what’s going to happen. I know this [pandemic] is a cosmic change and that nothing will ever be the same again.”
We can’t help but feel the same way. Losing Milton Glaser is a cosmic change and nothing will ever be the same again.