June 26, 2017
Charles (1907–1978) and Ray Eames (1912–1988) were husband and wife American designers who made significant historical contributions to the development of modern architecture and furniture. Among their most well-known designs is the ‘Eames Lounge Chair.’ They also worked in the fields of industrial and graphic design, fine art, and film.
Charles was an American designer, architect and filmmaker. He and his second wife Ray Kaiser are responsible for groundbreaking contributions in the field of architecture, furniture design, industrial design, manufacturing and the photographic arts.
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October 8, 2015
Massimo [ma-see-moh] Vignelli [veen-yell-ee] (1931 – 2014) was an Italian graphic and industrial designer who worked in a number of areas including product packaging, housewares, furniture, public signage, and showrooms. He was the co-founder of Vignelli Associates, with his wife, Lella. His ethos was, ‘If you can design one thing, you can design everything,’ and this was reflected in the broad range of his work. Vignelli worked firmly within the Modernist tradition, and focused on simplicity through the use of basic geometric forms in all his work.
His educational background was in architecture, which he studied at the Politecnico di Milano and later at the Università di Architettura, Venice. From 1957 to 1960, he visited America on a fellowship, and returned to New York in 1966 to start the New York branch of a new company, Unimark International, which quickly became, in scope and personnel, one of the largest design firms in the world.
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March 11, 2015
Susan Kare (b. 1954) is an artist and graphic designer who created many of the interface elements for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She left Apple with Steve Jobs in 1985 to be the Creative Director at his new company NeXT.
Kare was born in Ithaca, New York, and is the sister of noted aerospace engineer Jordin Kare. She graduated from Harriton High School in 1971, received her B.A., summa cum laude, in Art from Mount Holyoke College in 1975 and her Ph.D. from New York University in 1978. She next moved to San Francisco and worked for the Museum of Modern Art. Today, the MOMA store in New York City carries stationery and notebooks featuring her designs.
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April 1, 2013
Wes Wilson (b. 1937) is an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters. Most well known for designing posters for Bill Graham of the The Fillmore in San Francisco, he invented a style that is now synonymous with the peace movement, psychedelic era and the 1960s.
In particular, he is known for inventing and popularizing a ‘psychedelic’ font around 1966 that made the letters look like they were moving or melting.
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November 7, 2012
Pablo Ferro (b. 1935) is a graphic designer and film titles designer. Born in Cuba, he was raised on a remote farm before emigrating to New York with his family as a teenager. Ferro taught himself animation from a book by Preston Blair.
Ferro worked on films as diverse as Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr. Strangelove’ to the split-screen montage of the original ‘The Thomas Crown Affair.’ He was a pioneer of quick-cut editing, multiple screen images (the first in film and television in 1963). Ferro’s visual style has influenced many in film, television, animation, commercials, novels and children’s books.
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September 8, 2012
Paul Bacon (b. 1923), is an American book and album cover designer and jazz musician. He is known for introducing the ‘Big Book Look’ in book jacket design, and has designed about 6,500 jackets and more than 200 jazz record covers. His first big hit came in 1956 with ‘Compulsion,’ a novel by Meyer Levin.
This cover also marked the inception of the ‘Big Book Look’ that Bacon became known for. This look features a large, bold title, a prominent author’s name, and a small conceptual image. Instances of this ‘look’ include ‘Catch-22’ by Joseph Heller, ‘Visions of Cody’ by Jack Kerouac, and ‘Bullet Park’ by John Cheever, along with countless others.
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June 5, 2012
Matt Mullican (b. 1951) is a American artist and son of abstract painter Lee Mullican. He received his BFA from CalArts in 1974, and rose to prominence as a member of the ‘Pictures Generation,’ a group of artists know for their appropriation of images from the consumer and media saturated age in which they grew to maturity.
Mullican’s work is concerned with systems of knowledge, meaning, language, and signification. Mullican also works with the relationship between perception and reality, between the ability to see something and the ability to represent it. Mullican has taught and lectured at Columbia University, The Rijksakademie (Amsterdam), The London Institute, Chelsea College of Art and Design, and The School of Visual Arts (NY).
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May 1, 2012
James Jean is a Taiwanese-American visual artist, known for both his commercial and fine art gallery work. He is also known in the American comics industry as a cover artist for various books published by DC Comics, as well as for his work for Prada, ESPN, and Atlantic Records. His work, which has been collected in numerous volumes, has been compared to Maxfield Parrish (known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery). Jean was born in Taiwan and was raised in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey. He illustrated covers for the comic book series ‘Fables’ and ‘The Umbrella Academy.’ In 2008, Jean retired from illustration and commercial projects to focus on painting.
In 2007, Jean created a mural for the Prada Epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. He also created a backdrop for Prada’s Spring/Summer 2008 show in Milan. Aspects of the Epicenter mural and the Milan wallpaper were transformed into clothing, handbags, shoes, and packaging. Prada undertook a global campaign that featured Jean’s work in advertising environments, animation, and special events. Jean developed an animated short based on the theme titled ‘Trembled Blossoms,’ taken from the poem ‘Ode to Psyche,’ by John Keats (one of his darker and more experimental odes). In 2010, Jean was commissioned by fashion designer Phillip Lim to paint a series of portraits featuring Los Angeles-based actors, musicians, and tastemakers, including Rachel Bilson, Selma Blair, and Devendra Banhart.
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March 28, 2012
Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung (b. 1976) is a Chinese-American new media artist who lives and works in New York. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Arts degree from San Francisco State University. Hung’s works are digital collages of popular culture and current events.
His media includes hi-definition video animation, video games, net.art, digital graphics and mixed-media installations. Hung has been called the ‘John Heartfield of Digital Era.’ He loans 5 percent of his art earnings to low-income entrepreneurs listed on Kiva Microfunds.
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March 7, 2012
Milton Glaser (b.1929 is an American graphic designer, best known for the ‘I Love New York logo,’ his ‘Bob Dylan’ poster, the ‘DC bullet’ logo used by DC Comics from 1977 to 2005, and the ‘Brooklyn Brewery’ logo. He also founded ‘New York Magazine’ with Clay Felker in 1968. Glaser was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in New York. He was educated at Manhattan’s High School of Music & Art (now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts), graduated from the Cooper Union in 1951 and later, via a Fulbright Scholarship, the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna under Giorgio Morandi. He was greatly inspired by his sister’s partner, who had studied typography in great depth.
In 1954 Glaser was a founder, and president, of Push Pin Studios formed with several of his Cooper Union classmates. Glaser’s work is characterized by directness, simplicity and originality. He uses any medium or style to solve the problem at hand. His style ranges wildly from primitive to avant garde in his countless book jackets, album covers, advertisements and direct mail pieces and magazine illustrations. Milton Glaser, Inc. was established in 1974 in Manhattan, and is still producing work in a wide range of design disciplines, including: corporate identities, environmental and interior design, packaging, and product design.
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March 6, 2012
Seymour Chwast (b.1931) an American graphic designer, illustrator, and type designer. Chwast was born in the Bronx, and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cooper Union in 1951. With Milton Glaser, Edward Sorel, and Reynold Ruffins, he founded Push Pin Studios in 1954.
The bi-monthly publication ‘The Push Pin Graphic’ was a product of their collaboration. Chwast is famous for his commercial artwork, which includes posters, food packaging, magazine covers, and publicity art. Often referred to as ‘the left-handed designer,’ Chwast’s unique graphic design melded social commentary and a distinctive style of illustration. Today, he continues to work and is principal at The Pushpin Group, Inc. in New York City.
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February 9, 2012
Dan Reisinger (b. 1934) is an Israeli designer of graphics, exhibitions, and stage sets. He was born in Serbia, into a family of painters and decorators active in Austria-Hungary and the Balkans. Most family members died in the Holocaust, including his father. He immigrated to Israel in 1949. Reisinger initially lived in a transit camp and then worked as a house painter. In 1950 at age 16, he was accepted as a student—its youngest at the time—at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.
He graduated in 1954 and was inducted into the Israeli military for mandatory service. He was the art director for the Air Force’s books and other publications. While there, he attended a class on postage-stamp design taught by Abram Games, who became his mentor and friend. Subsequently, he traveled, studied, and worked in Europe: from 1957 in Brussels and then onto London where, 1964–66, studied stage and three-dimensional design at the Central School of Art and Design (today the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design), designed posters for Britain’s Royal Mail. Then in 1966, he returned permanently to Israel and established a studio.
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