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One of the push pin designers whose work in posters is really important
was Milton Glaser.
His posters demonstrate the different approaches he would bring
to solving a visual problem.
This poster for a show called âBig Nudesâ at an art school gallery in Manhattan,
is a perfect example of how simply he could formulate
a response to an idea by shifting an image.
The idea that you would describe scale through drawing a frame and
having this figure, a torso and legs, bust through the frame,
gets the idea of something that's large across in the simplest of means.
But it's rendered in such a way that it has this kind of visual beauty and
color to it.
The typography here doesn't have to do any work at all.
The idea is completely conveyed by the image itself.
That's not true of some of his other posters
where he'll introduce a headline or the title of an event,
and the typography does add something to your reading of the poster.
This was a poster that was inserted in a Bob Dylan album that CBS produced
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that was one of Bob Dylan's electric albums where he used an electric guitar.
Milton Glaser creates a portrait of Bob Dylan,
but it's not a realistic portrait at all.
It's actually a reference to a famous work
by Marcel Duchamp where he used his profile to describe himself.
And then Milton Glaser adds the word Dylan in that
fake Art Deco lettering that he and his Push Pin colleagues loved so much.
And then Dylan's hair, the famous curly hair,
is articulated as a flowering of kind of art new vogue curlicues.
So there's a reference to psychedelic posters which we're going to look at
which is part of youth culture.
But there's also this interesting link to history,
again, through the reference of Duchamp and the reference to the 20s typography.
Milton Glaser used a similar approach in this poster for
a concert by the famous gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson.
This was a poster designed to be hung in multiples on the street in New York City.
And again, the portrait of Mahalia is through a simple silhouette of her face.
Although her face is articulated more than in the Dylan posters through
the use of shadow kind of curving around, so you can see her features.
But her portrait is wedged between two circular forms:
The rainbow form, which holds all the type, which again is set in the Art Deco
font in this sort of radiating arcs, giving you the information for the poster.
And then the other flat color graphic is a set of flowers in her hair,
which also appear on this image, which shows two posters,
a right and a left, glued together, to create the semi circles.
When they were glued all together in fours,
what you get is the form of a mandala, the sacred Buddhist prayer
form that creates the radiating circle with all the information.
And then flowers form circles, like a wreath of flowers, on her hair or a halo.
So the elements all together convey both a combination of beauty and
spirituality, but using a color palette that no one would miss on the street.
And that link again to the 1960s taste for
bright, clear colors used in a very dynamic way.
I want to end with this symbol, designed by Milton Glaser, that everybody
around the world can recognize, the famous I Love New York symbol.
Glaser claimed that he never had any idea that it would have
had the kind of staying power that it did.
But when you think about it, the absolutely radically simple
use of the typewriter I, N, Y,
and then the absolutely recognizable,
anybody can understand that image of the heart created the most simple
expression of loyalty and delight around visiting New York.
That it became a symbol probably has to do with this utter simplicity,
and yet it's not really about the form of the thing it's about the concept.
It just goes to show that sometimes the most perfect pieces of
graphic design don't come out of formal exercise, but come out of really
understanding what reads to the the audience in the most profound way
Louise SandhausFaculty, Program in Graphic Design
Lorraine WildFaculty, Program in Graphic Design
