Work, a source of vitality and well-being
For Push Pin Studios co-founder and New York City graphic design legend Milton Glaser, the idea of retirement is repulsive. I loved Anne Quito's profile of Glaser, who has just turned 90 and isn't going anywhere.
“I’m still working on a daily basis and nothing could please me more,” he beams. For the celebrated graphic designer, work is a source of vitality and well-being.
Born to Hungarian Jewish immigrants in the Bronx, New York, Glaser learned about the virtue of regular toil from his parents, who ran a dry cleaning and tailoring business in what was then the borough’s “Little Moscow” enclave. Glaser’s first job involved helping his father tend their small shop—fetching fabrics and threads, logging customers’ orders, and delivering laundry. He saved his wages for comic books such as Smokey Stover and Superman. It was from studiously copying those comic books that Glaser would develop an early aptitude for draftsmanship.
In 1954, Glaser co-founded the famed Push Pin Studios with Edward Sorel and Seymour Chwast (see my post on Chwast's At War with War).
"What followed was twenty years of collaborative graphic expression, as Push Pin redefined and expanded the imprimatur of the designer, illustrator, and visual culture at large," per the Push Pin website.
At the The Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives from the School of Visual Arts Library, a look at Glaser's marvelous book cover design work, which at one point was "the bread and butter of Push Pin."