[HN Gopher] Milton Glaser made America cool again
___________________________________________________________________
Milton Glaser made America cool again
Author : pseudolus
Score : 28 points
Date : 2023-03-30 12:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| dole wrote:
| Do New Yorkers, people actually like the new "We [heart] NY"
| logo?? The original _is_ iconic. If it ain 't broke...
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I don't. I like Glaser's. And also his IBM logo and a few
| others.
| Finnucane wrote:
| The IBM logo was Paul Rand.
| jacknews wrote:
| New Yorker articles are always way too long, and for this, about
| a designer, to have just one image of his work, I mean come on.
| shredprez wrote:
| The letter-fetishists strike again, waging their dishonorable
| war on the visual arts (and our spare time).
| gffrd wrote:
| You could always ask Chat GPT to summarize them for ya ...
| hypertexthero wrote:
| I was lucky to work with Milton for a few months some years
| before his passing.
|
| He was very eloquent, and I warmly recommend his books Graphic
| Design and Art is Work, and his essay, Ten Things I Have Learned
| (PDF):
| https://www.miltonglaser.com/files/Essays-10things-8400.pdf
|
| My favorite Milton Glaser video: https://vimeo.com/6986303
| [deleted]
| ur-whale wrote:
| https://archive.is/CRucv
| blululu wrote:
| This framing is a bit hyperbolic. Saying Glaser was even the most
| influential art director of that era feels tenuous. But does
| anyone seriously think that a tourism ad campaign saved New York,
| or that a poster is what made Bob Dylan famous? Obviously good
| design is important. But also it's just a small part of a much
| wider world. When I see these kind of hero worship pieces I think
| of the coworkers that I have had to work with who have a
| massively inflated sense of proportion and genuinely buy this
| line of thinking. A bit of humility might be in order here.
| waboremo wrote:
| The work they did with the New York state has absolutely been
| monumental. So monumental even 40+ years later people still
| prefer it to the newest creations. This campaign also re-
| emerged after 9/11 as a symbol of support, something most
| campaigns can only dream of.
|
| So it absolutely was a part of saving New York's tourism. Was
| it the sole reason, absolutely not, but I think in response to
| the article's "hyperbolic" views you're swinging far too much
| in the opposite direction by downplaying what impact it did
| have.
| detourdog wrote:
| My uncle is a kinetic sculptor and I have early childhood NYC
| memories of visiting him. The memories range from the smell of
| urine in the vestibule of his building on the Bowery or
| strategies to avoid ones battery from being stolen while
| parking a car. NYC had at least the reputation of being
| bankrupt. I also remember when suddenly the city exploded with
| the I heart NY campaign. The simple message was a master stroke
| of double-speak or Stockholm syndrome but proved as resilient
| and timeless as NYC.
|
| I should add there were multimedia slide shows with songs in
| theaters on 42nd street. Surrounded by prostitution and
| pornography.
| blululu wrote:
| The drop in Crime and the increasing financialization of the
| American economy might also be contributing factors. It was a
| great ad campaign, but the calling it heroic exaggerates the
| importance.
| detourdog wrote:
| No doubt that is true, but think you are neglecting the
| importance of simple messaging. The symbol endures to this
| day in exactly the same form and for the same purpose. To
| think this wasn't heroic effort by many people is cynicism.
| swalling wrote:
| NYC in the late 70s had a major branding problem. It was widely
| thought of as a dying, crime-infested shithole
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/t-magazine/1970s-new-
| york...) Like per the 1975 headline "[President] Ford to City,
| Drop Dead".
|
| Making it t-shirt worthy to say you loved NY was a major
| turnaround for the popular image of the city. No one thinks it
| singlehandedly saved NYC, but it's one of the most famous ad
| campaigns ever for good reason.
| tesseract wrote:
| I feel like it might be more accurate to say the 60s and 70s
| were sort of a golden age of logo design and perhaps of graphic
| design more generally. Glaser was certainly one of the most
| famous practitioners of that era but elevating him over and
| above equally famous contemporaries like Paul Rand, Massimo
| Vignelli, and Saul Bass feels like a stretch for sure. And
| there was also a lot of great and enduring logo work during
| that period by less well-known designers (think Bruce Blackburn
| for NASA or Peter Oestrich for Kodak).
| bee_rider wrote:
| Was NYC ever actually not cool? It has financial ups and downs,
| but it has always been the place where real ambitious people go
| to do cool shit, right?
| waboremo wrote:
| Yes, this era[1] was particularly rough for NYC.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_New_York_City_(1946...
| majormajor wrote:
| A _lot_ of "doing cool shit" 20th century development in the
| US happened outside of NY. Hollywood and aviation in LA. Tech
| in various places (Texas Instruments, for example, before
| Silicon Valley became THE place). Automobiles in Detroit. NY
| wasn't necessarily "uncool" the whole time, but there was
| definitely a time late in the century where it felt like it
| could've gone a similar way as Detroit, and became a completely
| hollowed shell.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-03-31 23:03 UTC)