Milton Glaser was born in the Bronx in 1929 to Hungarian Jewish immigrants. He studied at Cooper Union in the late 1940s and won a Fulbright fellowship to study etching under Giorgio Morandi in Bologna in 1952. That grounding in fine-art printmaking — Morandi’s discipline of infinite variation on a narrow vocabulary — stayed with him throughout his career.
In 1954 Glaser returned to New York and co-founded Push Pin Studios with fellow Cooper Union graduates Seymour Chwast, Ed Sorel and Reynold Ruffins. Push Pin became the counterweight to the European modernism arriving through Unimark and Vignelli. Where the modernists insisted on Helvetica and the grid, Push Pin drew from Art Nouveau, Victorian ephemera, American folk art and contemporary illustration. The Push Pin Graphic, the studio’s promotional periodical, introduced that vocabulary to designers and art directors across the industry.
In 1968 Glaser co-founded New York magazine with Clay Felker, serving as its president and design director for nearly a decade. The magazine’s visual language — witty covers, expressive typography, strong illustration — set the template for the American city magazine.
In 1974 he established Milton Glaser Inc. Three years later he donated the I ♥ NY logo to the state. The mark became one of the most recognisable pieces of graphic design ever made; Glaser was never paid for it and refused royalties when offered.
He taught at the School of Visual Arts from 1961 until his death, and in 2009 became the first graphic designer to receive the US National Medal of Arts. He died in Manhattan on his 91st birthday in 2020, still working.
