54 | JANUARY 6 • 2022 

Looking Back

From the William Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit History 

accessible at www.djnfoundation.org

A Design Icon
N

ew York City’s School of Visual Arts 
is currently displaying an exhibition 
in tribute to Milton Glaser (1929-
2020). Glaser was an internationally acclaimed 
Jewish graphic designer and illustrator and, 
with partner Seymour Chwast, a co-founder 
of the Push Pin Design Studios in 1954. He 
worked there until he passed at 
age 91.
Glaser’s career is impressive. 
The son of Hungarian Jewish 
immigrants, he graduated from 
Manhattan’s High School of 
Art and Design, and Cooper 
Union College in New York 
City. Glaser also studied at the 
Accademia di 
Belle Arti in Bologna, Italy. 
 From this point forward, 
one needs a lengthy scorecard 
to capture all his work. Glaser 
designed newspapers, maga-
zines, logos, corporate identity 
and architectural projects, and 
co-founded New York Magazine 
in 1968. He believed that “
All 
the work I do is basically work 
of persuasion.
” 
A small sampling indicates the breadth of 
Glaser’s work. He did designs for PBS’s Mobile 
Masterpiece Theater, brochures for Steelcase 
Corporation in Grand Rapids, and packaging 
for Mattel’s Barbie Dolls and new Hershey 
candies. He designed more than 400 posters, 
including the famous psychedelic poster that 
was included with Bob Dylan’s first “great-
est hits” album. And along the way, Glaser 
designed 10 different type fonts. 
Glaser’s most famous design is one that 
most, if not all of us, will recognize — the 
“I ❤ NY” — famous on coffee mugs, T-shirts 
and other souvenirs from the Big Apple. It 
is one of the most imitated designs in histo-
ry, although Glaser himself did not like the 
acclaim for this icon.
I was told that Glaser had a direct con-
nection to the JN, so I decided to go into the 
William Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish 

Detroit History for the story. Along the way, I 
found two additional connections.
Glaser’s Push Pin group did a complete 
redesign of the JN in 1997. The JN had doubled 
in size from 72 pages per week in 1986 
to 156 pages by 1996. Then-publisher 
Arthur Horwitz described the JN as “a 
house that kept adding new rooms and 
wings but no longer had a coherent floor 
plan” (July 18, 2017). So, he hired Push 
Pin Group, founded by “international 
icons of design,
” to do a complete and rad-
ical redesign of the JN, from typefaces to a 
new logo, from rules for use of white space 
to content flow. The redesign debuted in 
September 1997 and was the foundation of 
the JN layout for many years 
(it should be noted that, never 
standing still, the JN has had 
various redesigns since then).
In the Archive, I found that 
Glaser had two other direct 
connections to Detroit. First, 
there is an interesting sidebar 
with a Don Cohen article 
about Bob Dylan in the Sept. 
22, 2005, JN. Speaking of 
his favorite Dylan music, Adat Shalom 
Rabbi Aaron Bergman revealed that 
Milton Glaser was his cousin. “Friendly 
Persuasion” in the Jan. 31, 2003, JN is 
about “two renowned Jewish artists” dis-
playing their works at Center Galleries in 
Detroit: Murray Tinkleman and Milton 
Glaser.
Milton Glaser became the first 
graphic designer to receive the pres-
tigious National Medal of 
the Arts, presented to him 
by President Barak Obama 
in 2009. A well-deserved 
honor, indeed, for a great 
designer. 

Want to learn more? Go to 
the DJN Foundation archives, 
available for free at 
www.djnfoundation.org.

Mike Smith
Alene and 
Graham Landau 
Archivist Chair

