George Lois (born on June 26, 1931, in the Bronx, New York City) is an American art director, designer, and author. Lois is perhaps best known for over 92 covers he designed ^[1] for Esquire magazine from 1962 to 1972. In 2008, The Museum of Modern Art exhibited 32 of Lois' Esquire covers.^[2]

Background[link]

Lois was born in New York City on June 26, 1931, the son of Greek immigrants. Lois attended the High School of Music and Art, and received a basketball scholarship to Syracuse University, although he chose to attend Pratt Institute. Lois attended only one year at Pratt, then left to work for Reba Sochis until he was drafted six months later by the Army to fight in the Korean War.

Career[link]

After the war, Lois went to work for the advertising and promotions department at CBS where he designed print and media projects. In 1959 he was hired by the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach. After one year there,^[3] Lois was recruited by Fred Papert and Julian Koenig to form Papert Koenig Lois in 1960. PKL, as it was known, was also the first advertising agency to ever go public. In 1967 he left to form Lois, Holland, Callaway. His last agency, Lois/USA, which created memorable campaigns for clients such as Minolta, Tourneau and The Four Seasons, ended its run in 1999.^{[citation needed]}

Lois developed what he called "The Big Idea".^[4] He has claimed to have created the concept and prototype design for the "New York" supplement for the New York Herald Tribune (the forerunner of New York magazine); created the “I Want My MTV” campaign; helped create and introduce VH1; named Stouffer's Lean Cuisine frozen food line; and developed marketing and messaging for Jiffy Lube stations. He created the initial advertising campaign to raise awareness of designer Tommy Hilfiger. Other clients have purportedly included: Xerox, Aunt Jemima, USA Today, ESPN^[5] and four U.S. Senators: Jacob Javits (R-NY), Warren Magnuson (D-WA), Hugh Scott (R-PA), and Robert Kennedy (D-NY).^{[citation needed]} Lois and Jerry Cotts directed the music video for Bob Dylan's song "Jokerman."

In comments about Mad Men, a television drama that aspires to depict the advertising industry he worked in, Lois summarized his experiences of the times:

"Mad Men misrepresents the advertising industry of my time by ignoring the dynamics of the Creative Revolution that changed the world of communications forever...That dynamic period of counterculture in the 1960s found expression on Madison Avenue through a new creative generation—a rebellious coterie of art directors and copywriters who understood that visual and verbal expression were indivisible, who bridled under the old rules that consigned them to secondary roles in the ad-making process dominated by non-creative hacks and technocrats...It was a testy time to be a graphic designer like me who had the rage to communicate and, to create icon rather than con. And, unlike the TV Mad Men, we worked full, exhausting, joyous days: pitching new business, creating ideas, "comping" them up, storyboarding them, selling them, photographing them, and directing commercials."^[3]

Accolades[link]

Lois is the only person inducted into all of the following: The Art Directors Hall of Fame, The One Club Creative Hall of Fame, with Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Society of Publication Designers, as well as a subject of the Master Series at the School of Visual Arts.^[6] He is also in the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame. He and other notable advertising alumni of his era are the subject of the movie Art & Copy.

Controversy[link]

Lois has been accused several times of taking credit for others' ideas and for exaggerating his participation.

On May 18, 2008, the New York Times published a correction of an April 27, 2008 review of a George Lois art exhibit. In the correction, the Times stated that the "Think Small" Volkswagen ad campaign and the "I Want My Maypo" campaign were not created by George Lois. The correction identified Julian Koenig and Helmut Krone as the creators of the Volkswagen ad campaign, and John and Faith Hubley as the creators of the Maypo campaign, contradicting Lois' published claims of credit for these ad campaigns.^[7]

The June 19, 2009 episode of This American Life featured a segment in which several of Lois' former associates claimed he took credit for ad campaigns, ad copy and Esquire covers that were partially or wholly the work of others. The program contained interviews with Carl Fischer (the photographer who shot most of the Esquire covers, including some falsely claimed by Lois, such as the one of St. Patrick's Cathedral ^[8]) and two of Lois' former partners, Julian Koenig and Fred Papert.^[9]

On his website, Lois also claims he designed the Nickelodeon orange logo in use from 1984 until 2010. The originators of the logo, Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert, dispute that assertion, citing the actual designers Tom Corey and Scott Nash of Corey McPherson Nash, Boston.^[10]

Lois has often asserted that he named and designed New York magazine. ^[11]. In his 1991 book What's the Big Idea? he states, "Let me say right now, with my hand on the Bible, I, George Lois, created New York magazine."^[12] Sheldon Zalaznick, the first editor of New York, has written that the new magazine "involved the following people: Jim Bellows, Dick Wald, Buddy Weiss, Clay Felker, Peter Palazzo and me. At no time did any of them ever refer to you, by name or inference, in my presence. It is possible that you are the victim of a massive conspiracy of silence, but I do not think it likely. . . . The magazine was named by me and Peter Palazzo.”^[13]

Awards[link]

• Art Directors Hall of Fame: 1978
• Advertising Hall of Fame
• Advertising Age magazine "100 Most Influential Advertising Practitioners of the Twentieth Century".
• Copywriters Hall of Fame
• AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) Gold Medal: 1996
• Society of Publication Designers Herb Lubalin Award Winner: 2004

Bibliography[link]

• Lois, George (2012). Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!). London: Phaidon. ISBN 978-0-7148-6348-1. 
• Lois, George (2008). George Lois on His Creation of the Big Idea. New York: Assouline. ISBN 978-2759402991. 
• Hilfiger, Tommy; with George Lois (2007). Iconic America: A Roller-Coaster Ride through the Eye-Popping Panorama of American Pop Culture. New York: Universe. ISBN 978-0789324054. 
• Lois, George, ed. (2006). Ali Rap. New York: Taschen. ISBN 3822851566. 
• Lois, George (2003). $ellebrity: My Angling and Tangling With Famous People. New York: Phaedon. ISBN 978-0714842844. 
• Heller, Steven; foreword by Armin Hofmann; introduction by George Lois; essay by Jessica Helfand (1999). Paul Rand. New York: Phaedon. ISBN 0714837989. 
• Lois, George (1996). Covering the ’60s : George Lois—The Esquire Era. New York: Monacelli. ISBN 1885254245. 
• Lois, George; with Bill Pitts (1991). What's the Big Idea?: How to Win with Outrageous Ideas (That Sell!). New York: Doubleday. pp. 288. ISBN 0385414862. 
• Lois, George; Pitts, Bill (1977). The Art of Advertising: George Lois on Mass Communication. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0810903733. 
• Lois, George; with Bill Pitts (1972). George, Be Careful: A Greek Florist’s Kid in the Roughhouse World of Advertising. New York: Saturday Review Press. ISBN 978-0-8415-0190-4. 

References[link]

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2012)

Specific references:

General references:

External links[link]

• Official website
• Video: Adweek interview -- "Advertising is Poison Gas" from brightcove.tv
• Interview: Herb Lubalin Award Winner from YouTube
• Yahoo Video: Giants of Advertising July, 2006 from YouTube
• George Lois talks about ”Covers for Esquire”, 1970? from tena.ne.jp
• George Lois: A Punch in the Mouth, an interview from NotesOnDesign.net

Videos

• Matthew Schwartz interviews George Lois for From Print to Digital: On Location, 2008 from ScribeMedia.org
• Guest lecture at School of Visual Arts, MFA Design program (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
• Dominik Imseng interviews George Lois on the Creative Revolution from vimeo.com

Massimo Vignelli (born 1931 in Milan, Italy) is a designer who has done work in a number of areas ranging from package design to furniture design to public signage to showroom design through Vignelli Associates, which he co-founded with his wife, Lella.^[1][2] He has said, "If you can design one thing, you can design everything," and this is reflected in his broad range of work.^[3]

Vignelli works firmly within the Modernist tradition, and focuses on simplicity through the use of basic geometric forms in all of his work.

Life[link]

Vignelli was born in Milan in January^[4] 1931. As a teenager, he became enthralled with design and befriended many of the great architects of his day. (He sometimes says his youth was spent as an "architecture groupie.") He went on to study architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and later at the Università di Architettura, Venice.

From 1957 to 1960, Vignelli 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. The firm went on to design many of the world's most recognizable corporate identities, including that of American Airlines (which forced him to incorporate the eagle, Massimo is always quick to point out). Vignelli designed the iconic signage for the New York City Subway system during this period. Contrary to news reports and lore,^[who?] Vignelli did not design the Washington, DC Metro Map, which was designed by Lance Wyman and Bill Cannan. Vignelli designed the simple signage and wayfinding system for the DC Metro and was the one to suggest that it be named "Metro" like many other capital city subways. Its original name was a mishmash of various states and transportation groups.^{[citation needed]}

In 1971, Massimo founded Vignelli Associates with his wife, Lella.^[5][6] He and his wife continue to work from their New York office.^{[citation needed]}

Vignelli was involved with filmmaker Gary Hustwit in the documentary Helvetica, about the typeface of the same name.^[7] Vignelli also recently updated his 1972 New York City subway map.^[8]

Work[link]

Massimo Vignelli has worked in a wide variety of areas, including interior design, environmental design, package design, graphic design, furniture design, and product design. His clients at Vignelli Associates have included high-profile companies such as IBM, Knoll, Bloomingdale's and American Airlines.

Vignelli participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007, as well as publishing the book, Vignelli: From A to Z, which contains a series of essays describing the principles and concepts behind "all good design".^[9] It is alphabetically organized by topic, roughly approximating a similar course he has taught at Harvard's School of Design and Architecture.

In January 2009, Vignelli released The Vignelli Canon as a free e-book; an expanded version was printed in September 2010,^[10] but the original remains available for download on the Vignelli Associates website.^[11] In the introduction Vignelli writes, "I thought that it might be useful to pass some of my professional knowledge around, with the hope of improving [young designers'] design skills. Creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at its best."^[11]

Vignelli worked with the National Park Service and the design staff at the Harpers Ferry Center in creation of the "Unigrid System." The system has been used since 1977 in creation of park brochures in all national parks locations.^[12]

Vignelli Center for Design Studies[link]

Lella and Massimo standing in front of the Vignelli Center for Design Studies during construction.

Massimo and Lella Vignelli agreed to donate the entire archive of their design work in 2008 to the Rochester Institute of Technology, near Rochester, New York. The archive will be exhibited in a new building designed by Lella and Massimo Vignelli, to be known as The Vignelli Center For Design Studies. The building, which opened in September 2010, includes among its many offerings exhibition spaces, classrooms, and offices.

“The Vignelli Center for Design Studies will house our comprehensive archive of graphic design, furniture and objects,” said Vignelli. “Under the direction of R. Roger Remington, the Vignelli Distinguished Professor of Design at RIT, the center will foster studies related to Modernist design with programs and exhibitions on our work as well as other related subjects. The first one of its kind and size, The Vignelli Center will position RIT on the international forefront of design studies. Lella and I are delighted to see our dream taking shape.”^[13]

Awards[link]

• 1964 - Gran Premio Triennale di Milano.
• 1964 - 1998 Compasso d’Oro, from (ADI), Italian Association for Industrial Design.
• 1973 - Industrial Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
• 1982 - New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame.^[14]
• 1982 - Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design, New York
• 1983 - AIGA Gold Medal.^[15][15]
• 1985 - first Presidential Design Award, presented by President Ronald Reagan, for the National Park Service Publications Program.
• 1987 - Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York
• 1988 - Interior Design Hall of Fame.^[16][17]
• 1988 - Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island
• 1991 - National Arts Club Gold Medal for Design.
• 1992 - Interior Product Designers Fellowship of Excellence.
• 1993 - New York State Governor’s Award for Excellence
• 1994 - Honorary Doctorate in Architecture from the University of Venice, Italy
• 1994 - Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Corcoran School of Art, Washington D.C.
• 1995 - Brooklyn Museum Design Award for Lifetime Achievement.
• 1996 - Honorary Royal Designer for Industry Award, Royal Society of Arts, London.
• 2000 - Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California
• 2002 - Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York
• 2003 - National Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Museum of Design at Cooper-Hewitt, New York.^[18]
• 2004 - Visionary Award from the Museum of Art and Design, New York.
• 2005 - Architecture Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY.^[19]

References[link]

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (September 2011)

External links[link]

• Vignelli Associates
• Awards at Vignelli Associates
• Stock Exchange Of Visions: Visions of Massimo Vignelli (Video Interviews)
• Unimark
• Recent articles on Vignelli, Interior Design magazine
• Designweek profile
• AIGA.com feature
• Designobserver post on Vignelli's New York Subway map
• 5/21/06 designboom interview with Massimo
• Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work
• Vignelli's limited edition updated subway map for Men's Vogue
• Photo at 2008 National Design Awards in New York, NY
• An Interview with Massimo Vignelli (Published in Grafik Magazine, No. 181, 2009)

Herbert F. (Herb) Lubalin (pron. "loob'-allen"; 1918 – May 24, 1981) was an American graphic designer. He collaborated with Ralph Ginzburg on three of Ginzburg's magazines: Eros, Fact, and Avant Garde, and was responsible for the creative visual beauty of these publications. He designed a typeface, ITC Avant Garde, for the last of these; this distinctive font could be described as a post-modern interpretation of art deco, and its influence can be seen in logos created in the 1990s and 2000s. His innovations in typography have heavily influenced the design work of Neil Noobalin.

Education and early career[link]

Herb Lubalin entered Cooper Union at the age of seventeen, and quickly became entranced by the possibilities presented by typography as a communicative implement. Gertrude Snyder notes that during this period Lubalin was particularly struck by the differences in interpretation one could impose by changing from one typeface to another, always “fascinated by the look and sound of words (as he) expanded their message with typographic impact.”^[1] After graduating in 1939, Lubalin had a difficult time finding work; he was fired from his job at a display firm after requesting a two dollar raise on his weekly salary, up from a paltry eight (around USD100 in 2006 currency).^[2] Lubalin would eventually land at Reiss Advertising, and later worked for Sudler & Hennessey, where he practiced his considerable skills and attracted an array of design, typographic and photographic talent that included George Lois, Art Kane and John Pistilli. He served with Sudler for twenty years before leaving to start his own firm, Herb Lubalin, Inc., in 1964 .^[3]

Private Practice[link]

[edit] Eros and Fact

Lubalin’s private studio gave him the freedom to take on any number of wide-ranging projects, from poster and magazine design to packaging and identity solutions. It was here that the designer became best known, particularly for his work with a succession of magazines published by Ralph Ginzburg: Eros, Fact, and Avant Garde.^[4] Eros, (Spring 1962 to issue four 1963) which devoted itself to the beauty of the rising sense of sexuality and experimentation, particularly in the burgeoning counterculture, it was a quality production with no advertising and the large format (13 by 10 inches) made it look like a book rather than a quarterly magazine. It was printed on different papers and the editorial design was some the greatest that Lubalin ever did. It quickly folded after an obscenity case brought by the US Postal Service. Ginzburg and Lubalin followed with Fact, which the former largely founded in response to the treatment Eros received. This magazine’s inherent anti-establishment sentiment lent itself to outsider writers who could not be published in mainstream media; Fact managing editor Warren Boroson noted that “most American magazine, emulating the Reader's Digest, wallow in sugar and everything nice; Fact has had the spice all to itself.”^[4] Rather than follow with a shocking design template for the publication, Lubalin chose an elegant minimalist palette consisting of dynamic serifed typography balanced by high-quality illustrations. The magazine was printed on a budget, so Lubalin stuck with black and white printing on uncoated paper, as well as limiting himself to one or two typefaces and paying a single artist to handle all illustrations at bulk rate rather than dealing with multiple creators. The end result was one of dynamic minimalism that emphasized the underlying sentiment of the magazine better than “the scruffy homemade look of the underground press (or the) screaming typography of sensationalist tabloids” ever could.^[4] Fact itself folded in controversy as Eros before it, after being sued for several years by Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate about whom Fact wrote an article entitled “The Unconscious of a Conservative: A special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater.” Goldwater was awarded a total of $90,000, effectively putting Fact out of business.^[4]

[edit] Avant Garde

Logo[link]

Lubalin and Ginzburg again turned one magazine’s demise into the creation of another, releasing Avant Garde six months later. The creation of the magazine’s logogram proved difficult, largely due to the inherent difficulties presented by the incompatible letterform combinations in the title. Lubalin’s solution, one which sought to meet Ginzburg’s hope for an expression of “the advanced, the innovative, the creative,” consisted of tight-fitting letterform combinations to create a futuristic, instantly recognizable identity.^[4] The demand for a complete typesetting of the logo was extreme in the design community, so Lubalin released ITC Avant Garde from his International Typeface Corporation in 1970. Unfortunately, Lubalin quickly realized that Avant Garde was widely misunderstood and misused in poorly thought-out solutions, eventually becoming a stereotypical 1970s font due to overuse. Steven Heller, one of Lubalin’s fellow AIGA medalists, notes that the “excessive number of ligatures [ . . . ] were misused by designers who had no understanding of how to employ these typographic forms,” further commenting that “Avant Garde was Lubalin’s signature, and in his hands it had character; in others’ it was a flawed Futura-esque face.”^[5] Regardless of ITC Avant Garde’s future uses, Lubalin’s original magazine logo was and remains highly influential in typographic design.

Page design[link]

Avant Garde (January 1968 to issue 14 summer 1971) also provided Lubalin with a large format of wide typographic experimentation; the page format was an almost square 11.25 by 10.75 inches bound in a carboard cover, a physical quality that, coupled with Lubalin’s layouts, caught the attention of many in the New York design scene.^[4] Often, the magazine would employ full-page typographic titles, which at the time was a largely new idea; in recent times, Rolling Stone art director Fred Woodward has used this method widely in his publication. Ginzburg, who held some experience as a photographer, gave Lubalin total control over the magazine’s look: “Herb brought a graphic impact. I never tried to overrule him, and almost never disagreed with him.”^[4] Other issues included a portfolio of Picasso’s oft-neglected erotic engravings, which Lubalin willingly combined with his own aesthetic, printing them in a variety of colors, in reverse, or on disconcerting backgrounds. Unfortunately, Avant Garde again caught the eye of censors after an issue featuring an alphabet spelled out by nude models; Ralph Ginzburg was sent to prison, and publication ceased with a still-growing circulation of 250,000.

[edit] U&lc magazine

Lubalin spent the last ten years of his life working on a variety of projects, notably his typographic journal U&lc and the newly founded International Typographic Corporation. U&lc (shorthand for Upper and Lower Case) served as both an advertisement for Lubalin’s designs and a further plane of typographic experimentation; Steven Heller argues that U&lc was the first Emigre, or at least the template for its later successes, for this very combination of promotion and revolutionary change in type design. Heller further notes, “In U&lc, he tested just how far smashed and expressive lettering might be taken. Under Lubalin’s tutelage, eclectic typography was firmly entrenched.”^[5] Lubalin enjoyed the freedom his magazine provided him; he was quoted as saying “Right now, I have what every designer wants and few have the good fortune to achieve. I’m my own client. Nobody tells me what to do.”^[6]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work
• An Interview with Mr. Herb Lubalin(1969)
• "INDIVIDUALISM SQUELCHERS" by Herb Lubalin(1966)
• Postage stamps designed by Herb Lubalin
• [1]Herb Lubalin's Final U&lc