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Milton Glaser Inspires Klündt | Hosmer

Posted by Rick Hosmer on October 13 2010| 1 Comments

We recently participated in a webcast featuring graphic design guru, Milton Glaser. At 82-years-old, Milton is the grandfather (or great-grandfather) of graphic design is the U.S. He is best known for his iconic I (heart) NY design, which helped rebrand New York City away from it's street mugging, trashy, dangerous personna into the safe, tourist-friendly city it is today.

In his webcast, Milton spoke about the fuzzy line between design and art. He also made a couple of quotable statements that I'll share here:

"Looking is NOT seeing."
"Do not overestimate the viewer's interest in your design."
"People of our time are not used to spending much time trying to understand something that is difficult."
"You change your brain when you change the way you live."

So what did we take away from the webcast? Afterwards, our team talked about taking more "chances" with our design and not having pre-conceived expectations of what is possible. Designing for what we think the client will accept is a dangerous path for a design firm. Clients come to us because they need their message to be noticed and remembered. We need to be cautious of creating design that looks "nice", but misses the opportunity to be unique and memorable... and we need to be able to convincingly communicate that rational to risk-adverse clients.

What can we learn from a man who for nearly 60 years has been striving each day to bring beauty and clarity into visual communication? Don't sit back. Don't take the easy path. Don't be afraid to "change the way you live" if you want your brain to accept thinking in new ways. And lastly, you are never too old to create. Thanks, Milton.

Read Milton Glaser's "10 Things I Have Learned" excerpt from his 2001 AIGA talk in London.