MIL TON GLA SER
AN ATHENAEUM OF WISDOM
PROFILE | DESIGNER-ILLUSTRATOR
AN ATHENAEUM OF WISDOM MILTON GLASER is among the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States. He is the embodiment of American design during the latter half of the twentieth century. He is one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with the richness of visual language.
Written and Transcribed by Autumn Frantz
Portrait of Milton Glaser by New York Times Magazine.
PROFILE | DESIGNER-ILLUSTRATOR
alking into Milton Glaser’s studio I was excited to be meeting a renaissance man who would fill my brain with knowledge after having just a few moments with him. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived at his studio. An assistant crammed sixteen of us into a small, yellow, hot room – we all waited anxiously for him. Glaser walked in and my professor introduced herself and even though they had met several times before, he had still forgotten who she was. This was the first strike. I thought, why do people of high importance think they are allowed to be rude to others? He sat down and said “what do you all want from me?” That was strike two. Yes, he was probably just trying to make a joke, but it did not come off as one. Throughout the meeting, my feelings for Glaser plummeted. I immediately wrote him off as being an asshole by the way he spoke to us as if we were incompetent. After thirty minutes, Glaser couldn’t have left the room any faster than he did. I was so disappointed in him, in someone I had such respect for. Is this what fame and money brings; the feeling of being entitled to be rude? I was very happy with myself for recording the meeting so I could reevaluate the situation and try to make sense as to why everyone thinks this man is so great. I was wrong; let me admit it this one time in my life, I was wrong about Milton Glaser. Listening to the recording only made me realize that Glaser truly is a rare breed of intelligence. He wasn’t being an asshole, he was sharing his frustration with the world around him. I understand his frustration towards some of the professionals in his field, because I feel that same frustration within my own surroundings. As you read the interview below, I hope you can see the Glaser I finally saw through the recording.
This Page: “Art is Work” above the exterior door at his studio on East 32nd Street. Next Page: Examples of Glaser’s work. From right to left, New York Magazine, “Big Nude” Giclée, Sprocket Watch, Mad Men, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, and SVA Theater sketch. 127 EGO | FEBRUARY 2015
AN ANTHENAEUM OF WISDOM | MILTON GLASER
I
s a designer an artist? Design and art are not the same. They’re very different activities and their intentions are different. Design always is purposeful and always has a task. It always involves moving from existing conditions to one that is preferred. Art is about transformation of the species. Art is a mechanism for understanding what is real and… what is rarely attainable. It’s very hard to quantify, it is very hard to say what it is. But you know it when you see it because in the presence of art, you are changed, you are no longer the same person. Design has no such intention. Every once in a while and this is what confuses people that two things happen at once. When something that is made for a purpose also has the capacity to evoke this idea of beauty. And I have to say that in my own practice that is what I hope occurs occasionally, but it’s only occasional. Every once in a while you stumble into it and I would say that most people spend a lifetime without ever stumbling into it. Partially it’s luck, partially it’s persistence, partially it’s talent. Do you design for yourself or the viewer? You do something because of an assignment. So clearly the reason for doing it is because you have been asked to do it and you’ll be paid for doing it. That’s how you’ll make a living. You hope that you’ll be able to through that means do something that reflects your understanding and your perception of the world. Sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t. But you’re talking of such a broad spectrum of activities from de-
signing a little logo to doing a museum and then to apply the same criteria in a sense that there is a general principle is a… everything is basically a compromise of some kind but the reality of what you have to do to be a professional and your own desire to make something that is unprecedented, that will help people engage the world. And everybody is on a different spectrum. I have a question that I ask to my class, which helps you in the beginning. Suppose I told you, you have two paths in life, one of which is to do mediocre work and get enormously well paid for it, I mean big money. And the other is to do extraordinary work and never quite make a living. Pick one… not easy! So that defines your response to the question, what are you doing it for? Well, first of all, I’m doing it because this is the way I put bread on the table. Secondly I hope I can do something that interests me and amuse others. What advice would you give someone entering the design field? What kind of silly question is that?! What are you talking about? One piece of advice? Yes. WORK YOUR ASS OFF [everyone laughs] there is no other advice. What other advice could there possibly be? Except, get out of the field if you want to stay honest.
“ WORK
YOUR ASS OFF! ”
FEBRUARY 2015 | EGO 128
PROFILE | DESIGNER-ILLUSTRATOR
Would you rather a young designer try to make it on their own or should they continue their education at grad school? You’re doing your job, you’re trying to make things. So above all, you’re trying to make things that cause no harm and you’re trying to be good at it. I mean, learn to do what you do, I mean… read for Christ’s sake. It’s exactly one of the worst things about designers, is that they don’t read. They’re ignorant. They don’t understand there’s such a thing as language. As a result they don’t write either. I mean, they don’t write, they don’t read, they don’t listen. And part of it is just… you grow up and you’re an artist and you’re designated as an artist by your teacher at school or something and you’re pushed as this idea that you’re creative, the most abused word in the language, and that you are so unique and there’s nothing like you and its all… it’s a crazy, de-socializing thing that occurs and gets rewarded in the culture. Anyhow, the worst thing about my fellow professionals, is how ignorant they are about everything. How little they know about science and how the brain works or behaviors. You can’t be a moron and be a good designer. You have to learn what the world is about, what has been written, and you just have to be aware that it’s a big universe and if you are doing these things for others you have to understand that those others are you, I mean, they are not different than you. Do you think the designer should have multiple roles? Is the question you are asking, should you do a lot of things or should you do one thing? Well, I think it depends on who you are as a person. There’s some people who do one thing extremely well and they don’t do other things very well and they are very happy doing their one thing. And there are some people who like the idea of basically dispensing with their history and doing something they’ve never done before. I personally always love the idea of doing things I didn’t know how to do. And I screwed up a lot in my life because I didn’t know exactly the rules of the trade until I learned how to do it. You become identified with a way of working, like this person 129 EGO | FEBRUARY 2015
knows how to draw chickens better than anybody else. They draw the cutest chickens and they’ll have a life drawing chickens because that’s what they’re good at, that’s what people know, that’s what they’ve built their reputation to. It’s very hard in a professional context to avoid doing what you’ve already done because that’s how you’ve built your reputation. You have to earnestly fight that, really, resist the idea that you’re going to do this job very much like the last job because that’s what professionalism wants. It wants you to be type-casted into a certain type of product that can be replicated. It’s a tough issue. I mean, I think that’s a lifetime question for people in the design field. You have to see how broad and how deep you can develop your own understanding. What inspires you as a designer? I love this question of inspiration. Today I’m inspired…the light, has come through the window and illuminated my brain. What inspires you is doing the work. It’s the work that inspires you, nothing else. Well, that’s not entirely true. What inspires you is extraordinary work.
Brooklyn Lager label design
Can you talk about the Brooklyn Lager design? It wasn’t very complicated, there were beer labels that I look at years ago, they were very beautiful, traditional idea of complexity and I knew they had to have some kind of simple minded icon… this was sort of a “B” made out of foam. That was the only kind of sense of richness and complexity that they wanted to do. And instead of it looking ratty, they wanted the beer to look well-made. The idea was mostly about the sense of craft and tradition. Did you help them become where they are today? I’m suppose to have lunch with the owner of the company tomorrow, who is a very nice guy. He was a journalist and he has never been in the beer business. He came from a mutual friend about twenty-eight years ago and said he had a beer company, who didn’t have money and I said I’ll take a part of your company and
AN ANTHENAEUM OF WISDOM | MILTON GLASER
“ THE LIGHT HAS COME THROUGH
THE WINDOW AND ILLUMINATED MY BRAIN. ”
he said ok. So he gave me equity in his beer company. It’s a great mystery why something like that, like an object like that, creates an audience. One of the things I’ve always thought about, which was mysterious, is that design more than almost anything else I can think of, is about creating affection. You design something because you want your audience to feel well intended towards it, or like it. You succeed when you are able to make something that people like, and admire, and feel affectionate towards.
A very attentive student listening to Milton’s wise words.
What is professionalism? I’ve known it as a way that you carry yourself and conduct business, but you’ve been referring professionalism almost as a way that business itself works. Maybe I haven’t been very clear on professionalism. One of the things about professionalism is that you promise your client that you will try to achieve his ends. His ends are always profit Unless, they are in the information business, you are trying to elect a political candidate, ultimately it all ends in profit anyhow. That is very different than what you learn in design school or art school, which has something to do with the need to express your own ideals. Your need to contribute to society as a whole. Your need to be affirmative about the role of invention, creativity, transgression, in your relationship to the culture, which also includes your class. You can see immediately by definition you’re in the realm of contradiction. That trying to do what your client wants, which is to make money, and trying to do what society
wants, which is to have a good society, are not necessary comparable. And if you are being paid by your client, you’re in a tough spot. Cause if your client doesn’t feel that your interests are his interests, you aren’t going to be working much. Unfortunately the model of the artist, the model of the professional exists simultaneously, but are incompatible. But they try to sort of squeeze them together with, creative architects, creative graphic designers, without exactly defining what they mean by that word, creative. The idea of creativity is to do something that has not been done before. That’s what artists do. They basically say, don’t look at it that way, look at it this way. And that is a very dangerous activity in the field of sales and marketing because they want people to look at things the same way all the time. So you can see inherently that the two activities are very much parallel to one another and here we are spending all our time trying to reconcile them. They’re unreconcilable. So how do you rationalize that? Do you just accept it? You just make do. FEBRUARY 2015 | EGO 130