Milton Glaser To Inform and Delight

[Glaser] When I was a kid,
I discovered

that I had great prestige
in the neighborhood.

My friends could ask me
to draw anything,

which turned out to be,
almost in all cases, naked ladies.

They would describe
the exact position

and physical characteristics,
and I could do that on request.

Sort of a short transition
between that beginning

and what eventually
became my career.

[♪ piano jazz ♪]

Well, people ask me why I chose design,
like most American artists.

When I was a kid,
I copied comic strips, Walt Disney,

and then I went to the
High School of Music & Art,

which gave me a lot of options
about what I should be doing,

where I was
introduced to the idea

of what was then
called commercial art,

which was making things
to sell for money.

At the same time,
or parallel to that,

was this other idea
of fine art,

which was about
some other kind of value.

But I never could get
the idea through my head

that I could make a living
making paintings

that somebody would buy
and put in their house.

It just seems so weird to me
and so inappropriate for me.

I wanted to do work
that was public.

I wanted to do work
that was on the street.

I wanted to do work
that people saw.

At that point, I had already
internalized this idea

that it didn't matter
whether I was called an artist

or a designer or an illustrator
or whatever else it was.

The core value was always
the act of making things,

and the transformation of an idea
that you hold in your mind,

that becomes
real or material.

That to me, still, is the glory
of any creative activity.

[♪]

[Caplan] As the creator of
"I Love New York"

and the moving sequel
that followed 9/11,

he may be the best-known
graphic designer in the world.

But they don't
begin to even hint

at the impact and significance
of Milton Glaser's work.

He's taken the gifts
he had to start with

and developed them
along a dazzling variety of lines

that have influenced every
serious designer I can think of,

and that have materially affected
the way we get information,

the way we buy things,
and in fact, the things that we buy.

I've known Milton about 30 years,
and I remember being struck

by the mixture of talent,
play, and intelligence.

[♪]

[Glaser]
I love doing poses.

In fact, all designers
love doing poses.

Most of the time,
you're working on 5½ × 8½,

and suddenly you have
this enormous landscape,

which just gives you a different kind
of opportunity and presence.

[♪]

I love music
in all forms,

so I'm very responsive
to music experientially.

I loved to dance when my feet
would still obey my brain

and I think that
idea of movement

and a rhythmic response
has something to do with

the way you draw
and the way you make things.

I always tend to think
that the affinities

between all these forms
are very constant.

And also, I would like to see
whether it's possible to create

the same kind of emotional response
in graphics that music has.

Caplan: It occurs to me,
that for many people,

this poster is
as much the '60s

as anything they know
about the '60s.

People very often
remember it this way,

whether they were
there or not.

[Maxwell] When you
think of a Dylan poster,

that really speaks
to a generation.

It wasn't his generation,
but he was able to

understand what was happening,
and see what was happening,

and make work about--
in response to what was happening.

That's very unusual,
and I see the same thing in the poster

for Tony Kushner
for Angels in America,

to take the raw pain of a generation
of gay men who are all dying,

and transform it
into a piece of art.

His closeness to our culture,
to our civilization,

really allowed him
to change the design world.

[Heller] His influence
is one of a real star,

and there aren't that many stars
in the design field,

particularly in the
graphic design field.

Designers are-- their work is seen
but they're not necessarily heard.

Because Milton is so articulate,
so damn articulate,

um, his voice is requested
in many places.

So, between the voice,
the work, and the presence,

he's known
in many places all over.

And because the world itself,
the small world,

is so interested
in design,

and design becomes
this kind of Esperanto,

Milton speaks
the Esperanto well.

[♪ saxophone jazz ♪]

[Glaser]
Back in the mid-'70s,

there was a collapse of well-being
and morale in this town.

Nobody wanted
to be here.

[♪]

And the city
and the state

had gotten very apprehensive
about what was going on.

[♪]

A guy was hired
and he said,

"Look, we got a line,
'I love New York,'

"and we need a visual thing
to go with it.

"Can you help us?"

So we did a funny thing
with two lozenges

and it was just
typographical,

and that was the end of the job,
I thought.

And then a day or two later,
I was in a taxi,

and I very often carry
a scrap of paper with me.

I say, you know,
there's a better way to do that:

"I heart N."

Yeah, that would
be better.

[♪]

The world
was waiting for it.

I explain to students in terms
of understanding communication

that the creation of a puzzle
is one of the tools that you have

to make people
understand things.

When they activate the mind
to try to figure something out,

the likelihood is that they will remember
and respond to it more

than if they're
told something directly.

And in the case "I Love New York,"
which seems so simple,

"I" is a word,
complete word in itself,

heart is a symbol for a feeling,
and "N-Y" are initials for a place.

And because of that
simple little trick of activating

the problem-solving
impulse of the brain,

it stuck
in people's mind.

They saw it once;
they remembered it.

I have made nothing on
"I Heart" or "I Love New York."

Ever.

There've been no cash rewards
as a consequence of doing it.

On the other hand, it really
makes me feel very, very proud

to have taken part in that shift
in the city's consciousness

from being indifferent to itself
to realizing we love this place.

[♪]

I've been in this building since 1965,
and one of the reasons I'm here

is because it faces
the schoolyard outside

so every day, at 12:00, you hear
this burst of energetic voices.

I'm always embarrassed
when people come in

because it doesn't
look like a design office

with beautiful furniture
and fancy fixtures.

One thing you'll notice
is that I'm sitting,

along with everybody else,
in this undifferentiated space,

and I realize that,
in part,

that was because
of the way I grew up

in a three-room apartment
in the Bronx.

My father would be sitting at one corner
reading the newspaper,

and my mother would be sitting
in the opposite corner.

She would be
sewing socks and shirts,

and my sister would be sitting
on the couch doing her homework.

Most of the room was occupied
by this enormous dining table

that we only use
once a year at Passover.

And of course, we were all
listening to the radio at the same time.

So ever since then,
I've always worked in a room

surrounded by
everybody else.

I have never written
a memo in my life

because everybody here
can hear everything that occurs.

That saves
a lot of time.

[Bernard] I remember him
on the phone in his office,

and I came down
with the new manuscript

and was waiting
to talk to him.

He just motioned me over,
read the first three paragraphs

while he was talking on the phone,
and made a sketch.

Milton said, "We should always
operate by interruption."

[Glaser] We had about
a hundred people in this building,

if you could imagine
such a thing,

running the magazine
of the first three or four years.

[Bernard] We were on the floor
of this building, the fourth floor.

It has one bathroom and
there were 30 or 40 people up there.

It was amazing.

And everybody was just crammed
trying to get this magazine

from Monday to Thursday
to a printer.

And this is well
before computers,

and we would be
talking on a Wednesday

in which we didn't
have a cover story,

we didn't have this story,
and we didn't have that story,

and Clay is on the phone
yelling at Jimmy Breslin and Tom Wolfe

or anybody else
that was not delivering in time.

Milton was the one
who was able to say,

"Don't worry.
We can do it."

If something fell through,
he'd do the illustration.

He gave me a real education
in the first year at New York.

The editor was Clay Felker.

Milton and Clay had founded
the magazine themselves.

Milton was
the chairman

and the kind of editorial force
in terms of service.

He kind of
reinvented--

if it had been invented
in the first place--

service journalism.

Our mantra was,
"Be on the reader's side."

Not the store owner's side,
not the subject's side.

If we were gonna
do a story on Macy's

or we were gonna do a story
on a little food shop,

it wasn't that we were trying
to promote that food shop.

It was trying to tell the reader
how to cope or to deal with that,

and how to get
the best out of it,

especially in the area
of teaching them how to

or learning with them how to
cope with New York City,

the Pastrami Olympics,
and the Underground Gourmet,

and things like that.

This is one of the first covers
Milton and I worked on together.

You can see it's
October 1968.

The hardest thing
was getting Gloria,

who wrote the story,
to sit in this Nixon box.

And later,
we helped her with the Ms.

There's one thing that,
to this day,

Milton and I were
too stupid to realize then.

Here we have
this magazine

that Gloria created
and we're presenting.

Should've been
a woman's hand

holding this magazine,
and it's not. [chuckling]

[Maxwell] What you had
in New York magazine

was what was happening
in New York City,

what was alive and kicking
in New York City,

and what energy
was flowing through,

and what food
was coming through,

and what dance
was coming through,

and you still see that in
New York magazine and Time Out.

It's a way of thinking
about life where, um,

without a filter,
really.

And you see that in every magazine
in every major city in the world.

But that's really only one--
it's one tiny example

of the way that
he's changed our lives.

And so the building's
had a bit of history connected with it.

It's kind of a bit
of a collective.

Now I have a little business
with Walter Bernard.

We do editorial design
upstairs,

and we've done
many, many magazine

and newspaper projects together,
and we still do.

And Mirko Ilić.

We worked on
The Design of Dissent together.

And while I once had
a very big studio--

when I was doing supermarket work,
we had 45 people here, and--

but it did not
make me happy.

I like the scale of the work
as we now do it.

We have very talented people
at this studio,

the kind of people that you
want to surround yourself with.

We are doing
a new identity

under the pressure
from these young people

who say we are perceived
as being fuddy-duddies.

I'll show you
our old identity,

which was based on
Russian constructivism.

You see that,
contrary to most designs,

that this emphasizes
perhaps the least important thing,

which was the number
on the building,

and obliterates
everything else.

Anyhow, we always liked this
because it was perverse.

So, I did this poster
for a lecture I did,

but I thought there was
something nice

about the symmetry of my name:
Mil-ton Gla-ser.

With Molly, we did a little version
of it just in one color.

I'm interested in work

that doesn't exactly look
as though it was designed.

It just sort of looks
as though it happened.

I always like that idea
that people have to work

to understand
what you're showing them.

Bernard: In 1996,
we were asked to redesign Fortune.

When we finished, John Huey,
the editor, called and said,

"It's time to rethink
the Fortune 500."

So Milton and I literally sat over here
working on 500,

and we were both trying
different things--

Milton on paper
and me on the computer, occasionally.

And I had this thought
of only doing it in type,

writing out
"The Fortune 500."

And while it was
very intriguing,

it didn't have power
from a distance.

And Milton and I
had also been playing

with various ways
of doing the big 5-0-0,

and while some of them
were really nice,

they also simply said 500,
and Milton said,

"Why don't we combine
the big number '5'

and the word
'hundred?' "

Well, it has been used
every year since.

It is now the 10th anniversary
of that cover.

As John Huey says,
it's Eustace Tilley,

and each year it's used, of course,
I divide our fee into the years

and I realize that we got paid
about three bucks. [laughing]

[Glaser] Thinking and making things,
mostly I do in the country.

Assembling and refining things,
we do here.

One is solitary,
and the others needs interaction.

And I love
this part of work.

You have
a partner,

you sort of go for a dance
and you move one way,

and the partner
sort of responds.

It's so much more fun
than doing things by yourself.

We are repackaging something
for a remarkable Brazilian pianist

called João Carlos Martins,
and our idea was

that instead of dealing with Bach
in a conventional sense,

that we would deal with
the idea of Brazil

and the fact that
ethnicity and location

produces a different view
of the music.

What I'm thinking is if we just
put that in the middle horizontally,

and we have a white panel
above and below,

and we just run our typography
in that white panel.

[Maas] Uncropped
in the middle, okay.

[Glaser] Yeah. Make it run
right through the middle.

[Maas] Kind of make it
smaller, all right.

[Glaser] We don't do it as
finishing something according to plan

because what's nice
is it it changes as you do it.

The energy
comes out of a work

that has been achieved
as a result of making it,

rather than as a premeditation
and then completion, you know.

I had designed that logo
for this school for the 40th.

So I got the mark
I'd done,

and I said just give me
a batch of these,

and we just ran them off
on our copier.

And I pasted
them all down,

and it looked just like a Frank Stella,
which wasn't bad.

And then as I was
pasting them,

some of the edges
were coming up

and says,
you know,

it sort of looks more interesting
with the edges coming up.

If I were doing this
on the computer

and it were not
real pieces of paper,

it never
would've happened.

You could create this on the computer
and the illusion,

but you wouldn't have
stumbled into it as a physical act.

[♪]

I've designed in
any number of typefaces,

but they're not
really typefaces.

They're kind of an idea that,
although it's done frequently now,

an idea about form that has been
translated through typeface.

The most obvious function of typography
is to convey a narrative.

But there's another whole range
of activity for typography,

which is more decorative
and more instrumental

in communicating
atmosphere.

I do a kind of novelty faces
which have a sort of premise

and then I use for a headline
or something else.

It's a modest intervention
into the world of typography.

Now, this is a
nice picture,

the two of us going
to work on something.

He was great.

I had an odd friendship
with Folon.

He spoke no English,
I spoke no French,

and we would have
these long conversations.

We would talk
for hours

without either of us
having the other's language.

And then one day,
I said,

"You know,
there's a good chance

we've been misunderstanding ourselves
all these years."

So, to celebrate that misunderstanding,
we said, let's do a book,

where I started drawing
and you continue it,

and then I continue your drawing,
and you continue mine,

and it's a series, in some degree,
of misunderstandings.

A little bit like
a series of improvisations.

It's like you get a theme going
and you just do variations on it.

But it sold very well
in Europe.

And of course, for me,
it really is a document

of my love and affection
for a wonderful, wonderful friend.

[♪]

[Heller] Milton probably has
the most international reputation

of any designer living today,
in large part because

he was at the center
of such culturally explosive things

culturally diverse things,
starting in the '60s.

I mean, because of Milton,
in large part, psychedelia exists.

Because of Milton,
in large part,

this kind of post-modern
sensibility exists.

He played a role
in all of these things,

and all of these things
got exported.

'Course there was
that big show

at Pushman Studios
early in my career,

which alerted Europeans
to the fact

that there was
a kind of new, um,

non-Swiss version of design
happening in the United States.

And as a result of that,
I became relatively well-known

in Europe and South America
and so on,

because of the kinds of assignments
that I got afterwards.

[Heller] We have done newspapers
around the world.

We've done
La Vanguardia in Barcelona,

ABC in Madrid,

O Globo in Rio.

We did Espresso
in Rome twice,

Barron's twice.

[Glaser] In France, we did L'Express
for Sir James Goldsmith,

who also owned a literary magazine
called Lire which we did,

and there were innumerable others--
Business Tokyo in Japan.

There was a time when I was
popping back and forth

to Europe often,
and other places as well.

I would think that
one thing that travel did

was simply amplify
what was already present,

which was an appetite
for whatever the surroundings offered,

whether they were cultural
or visual or whatever else.

I mean, you can't very well
go to Barcelona

and see Gaudí
and come back unchanged.

I mean,
there are some things

that travel just affects
your nervous system so much

that there's nothing
that you can do to avoid it

without even consciously
wanting to emulate something.

I would say,
in that way,

travel penetrates your consciousness,
but not in a rational way.

A woman in Milan
named Cristina Taverna

decided to go into
the publishing business

as she thought she would
publish The Divine Comedy,

and I was disappointed
because I wanted to do hell,

but then
I realized,

purgatory's much more interesting
because that's where we are now.

At any rate, I decided
to do it in mono prints,

which I hadn't done
for many years,

and so I took a course
in Woodstock.

The interesting thing
about a mono print--

and the name itself
reveals its limitation--

it says you can
only get one.

Except if you do it on
a piece of paper,

you could rearrange it
in the process of re-inking it

so that it gives you a very nice way
of doing a second version,

but what you can't do is
another print of the same thing.

Works that are too preconceived
tend to go dead.

They become inert
and less lively.

Work that responds to
the peculiarities of the moment

tend to be
more energized.

[woman] So, some of those surprises
are happy surprises.

[Glaser] Oh, absolutely.
You have both experiences.

You know, sometimes it's much better
than you thought it was going to be.

Like life itself,
sometimes it's much worse.

[woman]
That's right.

[both laughing]

[Glaser] I loved
doing purgatory,

perhaps the best things
I've done in my later life,

basically because
they were dark.

But I like the
drama of the dark

and I like the idea of
the conflict between good and evil.

Finally, you get to a point
where you realize

everything is related
to its opposite,

that if you have light,
there has to be darkness.

If there's truth,
there has to be lies.

Everything is defined by its opposite,
and they both require exploration.

I mean, if you simply do a drawing,
a simple drawing,

you're already dealing with
questions of dark and light, right?

[♪]

So much of my work
depends on drawing.

I think of drawing
as my essential resource,

that that's where my understanding
of form comes from,

and whenever
I can draw,

because I find it so pleasurable,
I will draw.

[♪]

[Peter] You could just sit down
in front of a piece of paper

and you would
start right away.

What is it about drawing
and line--

[Glaser] I am a great believer in drawing
as a way of understanding the world.

In fact, I was thinking for the book
that you want to do of my drawings--

Peter: I do.

Glaser: --that a title might be
Drawing Is Thinking.

[♪]

Tabibian: The idea is to
make the hand do what you want.

In his case, the hands
have no resistance.

The hands are inanimate tools
without will of their own,

and so the translation
of image to drawing

is automatic, complete,
unmediated, instantaneous.

To see it at work,
[chuckles], well...

[Glaser] It's funny, you know,
one of the great things

about being able to make
pictures and drawings--

it makes you feel like
you're really like God.

This drawing derives
from a photograph

of Monet and family,
and all I really did

was I put a snake in the foreground
that clearly wasn't there.

But I must say that it
transforms everything.

Once the snake enters it,
you see everything shift.

[♪]

[man]] How much of your work
is self-initiated?

[Glaser] Less than
I would like, actually.

I mean, I am so conditioned
to working to a specific problem.

But every once in a while,
I have the opportunity

to sort of do a cycle of work
that I basically start myself.

The Monet project
was pretty extensive.

There were
over 50 drawings.

All of these are events
that could've happened

but didn't necessarily.

Monet's dog.
I don't know if he had a dog.

[man] He does now.
[Glaser chuckles]

[Glaser] The truth is that
I have been looking for

a definition of what art is
all my life

without fully understanding
exactly what it encompasses,

but, in the course
of doing a speech,

I looked up several references
to what art was,

and I found one by Horace,
who's a critic and poet

back in Roman times
first century, so--

and he had this
great, great line.

He said, "The purpose of art
is to inform and delight."

And I thought wow,
it can't get much better than that.

[Heller] Going back to the Bauhaus,
there was this thing called

the Gesamtkunstwerk,
the total work of art.

And I think that Milton
comes out of that

directly or indirectly
looking at art as art.

And so the commercial
is certainly one part of it

that requires certain requisites,
and then the artist part of him,

the pure artist part of him,
requires other requisites.

But they're really joined.
I mean, you can't separate the two.

He might do pictures of his cats
that are quite beautiful,

and have no place
in a graphic design annual,

but at the
same time,

he injects all of that artistic humanity
into everything he does.

[Glaser] I just thought of that project,
of doing Piero's,

and I realized that if I'm
simply copying Piero's,

what value
does it then have?

And then I realized,
if you looked at Piero as nature,

like you're drawing a tree,
you don't feel as though

you're obliged
to represent that tree.

But then you just have an idea
that the tree initiates.

And so, with the Piero projects,
that's what I did.

I sort of started drawing
as though I were

looking through
a window at Piero, so...

[♪]

Otherwise, I would have been
embarrassed to begin.

[♪]

Gombrich, in his great book,
he says,

"There is no art;
there are only artists."

And you say, "Well,
wait a minute; what, exactly--?"

And what he meant,
of course,

is that what art is
becomes defined generationally.

Everybody's sort of
redefined what art is,

because there's
no then there, right?

It is, in fact, what society determines
at any moment in history.

And the great enemy of art,
of course,

is the institutionalization of belief,
like style or like taste.

We say, "Well,
we finally got to that.

"Here we are.
This is really art."

And once that has-- that happens,
that crystallization of belief,

we're saying,
"Okay, I got it now.

"We put two yellows, one red,
and three of the green guys."

Once that happens, you realize that
that becomes a limitation, right?

When I had my show very early
at the Museum of Modern Art

that Emilio Ambasz
had arranged,

there was one large poster,
the big nude,

that didn't have
any typography on it.

The curator of prints
came in,

he said,
"You can't show that.

"It doesn't have any
typography in it."

He says,
"So what?"

"Well, that makes it
a print,

"and that comes
under my jurisdiction,

"and I don't want that
as representing the print."

I said,
"I can't believe it."

What I have always hated in my life
is the parochialization of art,

making it a special activity
unrelated to other activities.

It finally ends up as being
an instrument for social enhancement

and not what it really is,
which was an expression

of a very fundamental instinct
of the species.

There's a wonderful book
that I have quoted for most of my life

by Lewis Hyde
called The Gift,

and it basically says
that this gift-giving,

which occurs in primitive cultures
from one tribe to another,

which is a device for pacifying others
and establishing relationship,

is what artists do.

They basically create
the commonalities,

the symbolism,
so that people feel as though

they have some relationship
to one another.

When people don't feel that
they have that relationship,

they kill each other,

so that row of providing common ground
is absolutely essential to civilization.

The nice thing
about it is

there's always a next plateau
of understanding.

It's very exciting to think that
you don't run out, right?

That history doesn't run out,
that art doesn't run out,

and so you just,
you go as far as you can,

and then leave some room
for the next guy.

[♪ relaxing piano music ♪]

In junior high school,
when I was deciding whether

to go to Bronx Science
or music and art,

and I had a very encouraging
science teacher,

and I made the decision
that I would go to music and art.

And shortly after
I'd made that decision,

he stopped me
in the hall one day.

He said, "I wanna talk to you."
And my heart sank.

So we went into his office
and he reached down into his desk,

and he pulled out
a box of French conte crayons.

He gave it to me and he said,
"Do good work."

To some degree, everything I do
has been supported by this idea

that the only way
I could really pay him back

was to do
good work.

[♪]

Well, this is my old high school,
a high school of music and art.

I received an exceedingly
good education there.

And a few years ago,
the principal, Kim Bruno,

asked me if I would do
a new identity for the school.

Now, the problem seemed to be
the name of the school itself,

which, if you
can believe it,

is the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School
of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

My suggestion was that they
change the name to LaGuardia Arts.

And on that basis,
I proceeded to design a logo

that is based on the idea
of musical score,

and it is the only logo
that can actually be sung.

[singing] ♪ La... ♪

But I entered the school at 15
because I came from junior high school.

After there, I got into Cooper Union,
and I must say,

I received a wonderful,
wonderful education.

Well, Push Pin
grew out of an attempt

to recreate the spirit
and the energy

of Cooper Union
while we were students there.

It was years later,
after I had come back

from Italy
on my Fulbright,

that we all decided we would
like to continue to work together.

[Heller] Push Pin gathered together
some very demonstrative personalities:

Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast,
as the leaders,

Ed Sorel was involved,
and others.

And it created a stylistic buzz.
It created an attitude.

Push Pin was like
the epitome of fun in design.

[Glaser] We worked from
a different point of view.

It was an eclectic
point of view

that celebrated ornament
and drawing and narration,

all the things that the modernists
taught us to hate.

[Heller] In that sense,
Push Pin opened a door into eclecticism

that no other firm had done,
and did so in a sophisticated way.

[♪]

Push Pin had,
as a strategy,

to draw on these historical forms,
these passé forms,

bring them together,
meld them, mold them,

and make them into something
that was highly contemporary.

[Glaser] I felt, actually, that
our success had defined us too much.

Push Pin had become a style,
and I don't trust styles.

And above all, I don't want to
be encapsulated in a style.

So, it felt to me as though
I would have to redefine myself.

I really started Milton Glaser Inc.
at that time,

began to move into areas
of restaurant design for Joe Bau,

supermarket design
for Sir James Goldsmith,

and that required
really transforming

a small studio
into a large studio,

and still staying with all the activities
of New York magazine,

which included acquiring
the Village Voice

and starting up
New West magazine on--

and we were very ambitious
through all of that.

It was a very,
very busy time.

[♪]

And that kept me going
for a good long time,

until Murdoch bought New York
and we left,

and I continued to do supermarkets
for about 20 years.

I've spent a large part of my life
doing supermarkets.

And I learned a lot
from the act of doing that.

I'm very happy with the work
we did on supermarkets

because it made life better
for a lot of people.

It made things clearer.

It made the navigation
through the market

more understandable,
and less fatiguing.

Also because
we really had to

talk to your average American
all over the country,

and that was very,
very instructive.

[♪]

A lot of the work we do
is sort of for--

aimed at a thin hierarchy of
design-interested personalities,

and other designers,
and fancy people as well.

But those years designing supermarkets
were very fundamental

in shaping my perception
on how to communicate cleanly.

At that book event,
at least eight people

came over to me
at the event in publishing--

Man: Yes.

Glaser: --to have said, I studied
with you back 40 years ago.

I love to teach.

I don't think I have
an obligation to teach.

I teach because
I feel better when I teach

as when I don't teach.

Glaser: But I think what you've done
in this presentation--

you've really
got that.

It is withholding.
It doesn't give you everything.

It's just one of the
secrets of design.

[Glaser] People always ask me
why I teach, and, of course,

the fact that people
ask that question in itself

just indicates the kind
of low-voltage contempt

that teaching is actually held in
in America.

The idea of being a teacher
is that you've got to pass it on.

You learn something;
you develop some insights;

your experience can be transmitted
and that is the nature of civilization.

[Heller] Milton's summer program
is a monumental experience

for anybody who comes
into the programs.

He draws people
from all over the profession.

This is not somebody
just coming to school.

These are people who've been
working for years.

And what he does
is he gives them this wisdom,

as well as
tests them.

His curriculum is a constant--
let's call it boot camp.

I mean, he takes a problem
and he has people solve it

in a very short
amount of time,

so it's really testing
both sides of the brain at once.

And if they can succeed, great.
If they fail, even greater

because then you get
his wholehearted wisdom.

Glaser: I wanna just-

[Maxwell] I took his class
when I was 17.

I began to realize we were not
designing objects, like book covers.

We were
redesigning the world.

I don't think I've ever heard him
say we have a responsibility.

It swims into the consciousness
by his actions.

To have spent time with him
and not feel responsibility

would've been
to not be paying attention.

[Heller] The ripple effect
that Milton has had is enormous.

People who come out
of those programs,

there are-- you know, there are
certain epiphanies that they have,

and they go back into their jobs
with this new inspiration.

Or, as our students do,
they go back into the world

with a tool kit that they can draw on
at any given time.

It's not a specific thing,
necessarily.

But in the case of one of
our students, Deborah Adler,

her thesis project was to repackage
and redesign prescription drugs.

[Adler] My grandmother
was taking an antibiotic,

which is what my grandfather
was taking.

Her name is Helen Adler
and his name is Herman Adler,

and she accidentally took his drug,
which is a higher dosage.

Nothing bad happened
other than the fact that she got dizzy,

but it was enough to make me
aware of the packaging.

[Glaser] At one point,
we thought it should be something

that the federal government
would mandate,

and it wasn't
going to happen.

The government would
never get behind it.

It would take 35 years
for anything to happen and so on.

So, I had a connection to Target--

[Heller] --who then ultimately
bought the whole concept,

and rolled out a new
prescription drug package

that has become
the paradigm of design

in the service of society
and the service of culture.

I mean, without Milton's aid
and enthusiasm,

this would never
have happened.

And this is the highest bar.

There are middle bars where,
thanks to Milton,

people are just practicing in a
different, more thoughtful way.

It's not about
design as service.

It's design
as cultural value.

[Glaser] I learned
a lot about teaching

from studying with
Giorgio Morandi years ago.

What the students get from a
good teacher is not instruction.

What they get is a demonstration
of someone's view of life.

I mean,
that's what you teach.

You teach a way of
perceiving the world.

His entire life
was about the work.

There was nothing else.

I thought,
no matter what you're doing,

whether it's painting
or typography

or even working as a waiter
in a restaurant,

that complete commitment
is transformative.

I mean,
it makes you different

when you truly commit
to what you're doing.

I went to Italy having
never left home before.

I guess I was 20 or 21,
you know, smart-ass Jewish kid,

who really figured I knew
the way the world worked.

And then
I went to Italy,

and I realized that I didn't know
anything about anything.

And it gave me this sense
of the continuity

of human history,
of the human experience,

I mean, going from, you know,
Romanesque to the Gothic to the--

[man] It's a
kind of old place.

[Glaser] Right, it's an old place.
And it's all-

but more importantly,
it's all visible.

It really shifted me from
the idea of modernism

as being the
only available resource

to draw on
for a young designer.

I suddenly realized
history was not the enemy,

that you could use anything
as raw material to make something.

That was a great,
great transformation for me,

and it's persisted
to this day.

I mean, in that sense,
Italy was very important

to changing my view of, well,
the importance of food.

My mother
was a terrible cook.

I got to Bologna,
the best place for eating in Italy,

and suddenly
I understood something

that I'd never learned
in the Bronx.

[Tabibian] There were several things
about his mother's spaghetti recipe.

She would take a pound
of Mueller spaghetti,

which was,
as a brand,

much less intimidating
than Buitoni or Rozoni.

It sort of sounded
a little Jewish to my mother.

And she would boil it in a
big aluminum pot for about an hour.

[Tabibian] And she puts on it
some Velveeta cheese.

And about a half cup
of Heinz tomato ketchup.

And, uh, bakes it.
Bakes!

And then allowed to cool,
and she would de-mold it,

take it out, and sort of looked like
the dome of St. Peters.

Bravo.
Guess what happens next?

And then
she would slice it--

And fries it!

--and fry it in chicken fat.

[Tabibian] From that to Ristorante Diana
in Bologna, it's a long way.

It's a very long way.

One thing
I can tell you about Milton

uh, is that he loves food,
and he loves to have, uh, lunch.

[Glaser] Okay,
so here we are

at one of the great
dim sum palaces in Chinatown.

My favorite way of eating--
a lot of little things.

[Bernard] When he was at
New York magazine, he had a--

several regular lunches
with Jerome Snyder,

who was his partner
at The Underground Gourmet.

So they would invite
three or four people,

and we'd go to some
Polish delicatessen

or cheap coffee shop
or whatever,

but we'd always have
these wonderful lunches

because we'd have to sample
everything on the menu.

[Glaser] So what
you would do is

you would go into
an ethnic neighborhood.

You would always
find small restaurants

catering to the
local community.

It was the first time anyone
had ever written about cheap restaurants,

because cheap restaurants
don't advertise in magazines.

But the great thing
about it

was that it really had a profound effect
on eating patterns in New York

because we made it acceptable
to the middle class

to eat in a
cheap restaurant.

And I think maybe that was the
best thing I ever did because it began--

We were certainly not
solely responsible,

but it began that shift
of the city's awareness

of this incredible reservoir
of interesting food

that was in this city
already.

And then the realization
of the diversity and the richness

of this available,
good-quality food.

Because if you went in a
Hungarian neighborhood,

they were not going to be
serving lousy Hungarian food.

But that idea that it was okay
to go to a cheap dive,

to have a good meal,
was really something that

The Underground Gourmet
brought to the surface,

and a lot of things happened
as a consequence of that.

[woman] Do you still enjoy going to
offbeat, inexpensive restaurants?

[Glaser] Oh, I love-- I love
going to cheesy restaurants.

There are a couple in my neighborhood
down at 32nd street,

but I'm not gonna tell you
what they are.

Woman: No, no.
It would ruin them.

[Glaser] Yeah, absolutely.

[♪]

[Tabibian] In his work,
food is a major issue,

[♪]

because for him,
food is nurture.

Food is warmth.

Food is generosity.

Food is sharing.

[Glaser] I experience
the same satisfaction

from preparing any dish
that requires cutting

and chopping and arranging
as I do when I'm drawing.

I mean, I don't-- I don't view those
as different kinds of experiences.

[Caplan] Milton's love affair with
and his expertness in food

has informed his design of menus,
restaurant interiors,

and for that matter,
restaurant concepts.

[♪]

[Glaser] That's
the big nose.

This was a disreputable old Irish bar,
and to Shelly Fireman's credit,

he saw that it was a,
uh, unpolished diamond.

And so we completely
ripped it apart

and designed it so that it would have
a series of unfolding experiences:

the bar,
informal and friendly.

We have
the grand room,

which is a paraphrase of the academia
where I studied in Bologna.

So you have this sky light,
this north light.

I hired a painter
named Elliot Levine

to do these
fake Renaissance details.

And then I also commissioned
a friend of mine, Jordan Stecko,

to do enlargements of
details of the body

to signal the idea
this is an art school.

I don't know
how many people get that

but I like the idea that if they're
eating here for ten years,

one day you look up and
you say, "Oh, I get it."

I love that kind of
sustained mystery.

This thing, I guess they've remade
into fancy apartments, huh?

Woman: Yeah.

Glaser: This old building?
That's a new development.

It really was once
a refuge for people

who couldn't pay
adequate rents.

We got our apartment,
which was a floor-through,

for $135 a month.

That wouldn't get you very much
in New York these days.

Well, here.
Here is a sadness.

I was gonna show you
my old building.

It's gone.

54 St. Mark's Place
used to be here.

Gone.
[laughing]

Absolutely
and completely gone.

[Shirley] When we
returned from Rome,

we found an apartment
on St. Mark's Place

where we stayed
for 18 years.

And then, we bought
this apartment 30 years ago.

[Glaser] What we have
on the walls here

are my first purchase
in the realm of art,

which was a
Picasso lithograph,

magnificent one,
when he was influenced by Ang,

and an odd painting of a man
on a fantastically armored horse

that I bought while
we were living in Rome

in a flea market
for two dollars

that was
covered over with

a crudely drawn cowboy
on horseback.

I took it up to the house
and I told Shirley,

"We have something under this,
and I think it might be Uccello."

So I cleaned it
with turpentine,

because I saw that the painting underneath
was in egg tempera,

and this extraordinary
figure emerged.

Maybe 10 years later,
I was looking at a book

of Jacopo Bellini's
and I found the exact drawing.

Whether it's Bellini or not is arguable,
but we like to think it is.

[♪]

[Shirley] Of all of the things
that we've collected,

the African has lasted
longer and deeper.

[♪]

[Glaser] In African culture,
the word for "good"

and the word for "beautiful"
are identical, which is--

that link to the notion
of beauty and good,

which we sort of
skirt about,

is actually explicit
in African culture.

[Shirley] One of my friends said
that it made her very uncomfortable,

having all these
stare at her.

They don't make me
uncomfortable at all.

They're my friends.

[Glaser] When we come home,
we feel as though we're at a party.

I've done any number of children's books
with my wife Shirley

and that's always been
an interesting back-and-forth process.

At the end,
I always felt

that the conversation made for a
much better product

than I could have done
with a more compliant partner.

The first year
we were married,

we started working on a children's book
called If Apples Had Teeth.

We enjoyed
that experience so much

that 40 years later,
we did another one.

[both laughing]

At any rate,
that was The Alphazeds.

We helped in the
color palette;

we designed the basic logo
in all their communications;

we designed
the landings.

Oh, this is a wall made of steel
but gilded in copper,

and it reflects all the light coming in
through the windows,

and then at night,
has very different characteristics.

It's basically based on the
Tibetan cloud drawings that I discovered,

and then rolled so that the forms
would open up all along the way.

We had no idea what it was
gonna look like until it was installed.

That's a very
different character.

Woman: Very beautiful.
Very mysterious.

Glaser: That's right.

This opportunity
was great

to actually learn more about Tibet,
particularly in the Himalayas.

I mean, my interest
has always been

not about the differences in art,
but their commonalities,

and what you find is,
whatever you've learned

goes into the
next project.

So I don't look at these so much
as being separate things

but rather as
a kind of continuum.

I've always had an interest,
at least, as most people do,

in what is called
a spiritual side of life.

I mean, that intersection
between religion and belief,

and making art,
and a sense of community,

and all those things
that are involved,

a departure from
the material world.

All of that has shaped
the kind of interest,

um, even though it hasn't
coalesced into hard belief.

I think you have to
hold your beliefs lightly.

Lang: Unexpected pleasure.

Glaser: Peter,
you know George Lang.

Lang: I do.

About, uh, 1990 or so,
my friend and partner, Ronald Lauder,

decided to buy something
extraordinary in Budapest,

this incredible restaurant complex
called Gundel.

And the first thing was, you know,
what's going to be the logo?

And of course, the first thought
I had was Milton.

And I found a letter
and the menu

and a couple of other things
from the beginning of the century

and it had
a elephant on it.

And Milton, about two weeks later,
made a presentation.

[♪]

Amazingly, Milton,
without knowing anything about it,

came up with the same logo
which was there 100 years ago.

[♪]

Milton has two things.

He's able to put together
the technical equipment

of creating things,
actually making it,

knowing what you
have to worry about,

and something else, spirit,
which comes from heaven knows where.

[♪ dramatic orchestra finale ♪]

[Vanden Heuvel] When
you're sitting with Milton,

you have one of the
graphic geniuses of,

not only the United States,
but of the world in my view.

So I have to admit that in those
first few meetings many years ago--

I mean, I've been working closely
with Milton since '85.

He's intimidating.
He can be intimidating because

it's the breath of an intellect,
allied with a vision.

And so in those first few meetings,
was I a partner in that?

Probably not.

I was more a disciple and a student,
and one remains that,

but what becomes
clear with Milton

is that there is a sweetness there,
and there is a humanity,

and there is a spirit
of wanting to be of help

in bringing your ideas
and your message

with more power
to a broader audience.

So it kind of melts away
the fear factor,

which is something that Milton's
always working against anyway.

He and I've had long talks
about the importance of fighting fear,

which is so prevalent
in these times.

He has a great sense
of the nation's history

and its place
in our culture and politics,

and so he has that
in the back of his mind

that the redesign
be in sync with that spirit.

And I think
the great designers

have that sense of
continuity and change,

and Milton has that as
an abiding vision.

He's so articulate,
so there's a great kind of dynamism

between the visual product
he'll show you

and as
he explains it.

And those meetings
are wonderful.

Occasionally, he'll email a note,
which is also great to get,

but to hear him
explain the vision is priceless.

[chuckling]

[Bernard] For a while now, he's wanted
to work with people that he likes.

He's always had that feeling, but--
but I think, at times,

he did things that,
you know, were necessary.

Glaser: When I was younger,
I could do anything.

Peter: Yeah, you told me this was
an evolving problem and an evolving--

[Glaser] I could do anything.
I could make a fruit pie outta shit.

I mean, there was nothing
I wouldn't--

Because I felt, geez,
I can learn something doing this.

Now, I realize,
I can do very little with anyone

where I don't
feel sympathetic.

[Glaser] There were two guys
who came to see me

about 15 years ago,
Tom Potter and Steve Hindy.

It was a time at the beginning
of the microbreweries,

and they wanted to call it
the Brooklyn Eagle Beer,

and I said,
"The first thing I can tell you

"is since you can basically own
the entire burrow, call it Brooklyn.

"You have an extraordinary
resonance and history."

[Hindy] I had a very difficult time
meeting this guy.

The first time I called his office,
his secretary, Eva,

basically told me to get lost.
She said, uh--

[Glaser] Can't believe
this story.

[Hindy] "Do you
know who Milton is?"

And I said, "Yeah,
I hear he's pretty good.

"I'd like to talk to him."

And she said,
"Wait,

"he doesn't just talk to
anyone who calls here."

Uh, and so--

Glaser: Well, we did get a lot of
crank calls during that period, I mean.

[Hindy] It, uh, sort of
spurred me on,

so I started calling there every day
and badgering Eva.

One day
she said to me,

"You're not gonna give up,
are you?"

And I said, "No, I want to
talk to Milton Glaser."

She said, "Okay, here he is."
Put him on the phone.

So I kinda blurted out my idea
about starting a Brooklyn Brewery,

and Milton said,
"Wow, that sounds like fun.

"Why don't you come in?
We'll talk."

[chuckling]

[Glaser] Amusing story.

And also why I don't seem to
get as much work as I'd like.

[both chuckling]

Glaser: Well,
I have to admit,

I've been at so many
startups that have failed,

I had no idea
we would get this far.

Hindy: Yeah.

Glaser: And the company
is in such wonderful shape.

Hindy: And now we're looking
to build a brewery, uh,

twice as big
as this.

Glaser:
That's fantastic.

[Hindy]
Be the next step.

[Glaser] This was a first:
a bottle that people think

is a reference
to the Brooklyn Dodgers,

but there was no letter form
that looked this way.

They just had the words
"Brooklyn Dodgers" in normal type.

However, people
are so convinced

that it has some reference
to the uniform

that the association
is convincing.

Hindy: I think
it's time for a beer.

Glaser: Ah,
that's a good idea.

[chuckling]

[Glaser] What we like--
what I like--

is basically working on
all levels of the culture

from the high
to the low

because the idea
behind all of that

is that
whatever the level is,

excellence can always exist
on that level.

So, a good ham
and cheese sandwich

is really every bit as good
as a crème brûlée.

In fact, it's better
than a crème brûlée,

but each form
requires its own level

of intelligence
and passion.

[♪]

[Glaser] The idea was
to do a mural above this entryway,

and I saw that the lights
that they had chosen

create this
series of arches.

Any mural you put up there would,
in effect, be destroyed by the lights,

so I used that arch thematically
so that would look as though

you had actually
planned on it.

The race starts slowly,
but the designs on these wheels

were based on an idea
that Marcel Duchamp had.

He made these
rotoscopes.

If you look at them,
the objects and the forms

seem to be moving independently
of one another,

and as they accelerate,
they sort of change their meaning.

[Kenny] what happens in the end
is that the people,

the faculty, the staff,
the students,

are profoundly, profoundly affected
by what happens in the design.

In the end, the most important audience,
I think, is internal.

The way they feel
about the place

makes a difference
in their learning experience.

This September,
Stony Brook

will take over Southampton Campus
from Long Island University.

[Glaser] So, we're thinking of creating
a kind of austere, sustainable place,

but it's some combination of
the WPA, the Peace Corps, the Kibbutz.

Well, here are some of the signs
we're playing with for the new campus,

and we introduce this idea
of a little wind power,

the whirligig,
to get the idea

that we're concerned about
sustainable energy.

[Kenny] It happens
you and I've

been talking forever
about ecological sustainability

and how we get over
to this generation of students.

It has to be not just
what they get in class

but the way their
entire experience happens.

And that's why your thinking about it
is shaping of what we're doing.

You're not just about pictures;
you're not just about designs.

You're about ideas;
you're about words.

[Glaser] We need that
in the world these days.

We need a more generous view
of what life and education is about.

People are so anxious to sacrifice
for what they believe in now

that it's the right moment
for this sort of thing.

But potentially at least,
it could be the biggest,

in terms of
its impact,

meaning the biggest thing
that I've ever worked on.

We are in a show at
the School of Visual Arts

that is based on a book
I did with Mirko Ilic

called
The Design of Dissent.

More than
anything else,

what you feel is the
energy of commitment.

People really care about
things that are in the air.

It's so different from the persuasion
of most advertising that you see

that, uh,
it's refreshing.

In New York,
the design profession

is mostly used by
commercial purposes.

That's what pays it.

There is art
you do free

and there is design
you do for money.

He has come to
the conclusion

that essentially the job
of advertising is to lie.

[Glaser] The saddest thing is that,
when people experience television

and know that
it's lying--

let's just say, or misrepresenting
the advertising that you see--

they'll still go out
and buy the product.

And I think this has
a real correlation between

what has happened
in American politics.

A couple weeks ago, I had a roll
of vinyl bags in my closet

that someone had bought for us
at a dollar store.

And it was extremely
cheap plastic,

so that when you pulled it
out of the box, it tore,

and you could just puncture it
with your hand.

I said, "These are the worst,
stupid, flimsiest thing!"

And I saw that the name of it was
Super Tough Vinyl Bags.

[audience laughing]

Just like [indistinct].

[audience laughing]

One thing we have learned
is that all you have to do

is repeat it
often enough, right?

I know when I was growing up
in the Bronx--

I was born in 1929,
and I grew up in

what was basically
a left-wing neighborhood in the Bronx.

It was called Little Moscow
at the time.

[audience chuckling]

[insdistinct], which was basically
a kind of socialist enclave,

by people who'd
come from Europe

and who were convinced
that they could invent a better life.

And everybody was a political activist
because that's what you did.

You woke up
in the morning,

and you went out
and you distributed leaflets.

That was just normal.

[audience laughing]

The accomplishment of the '60s
made us so full of naïve enthusiasm

about the fact that
love could conquer all

and that all
you had to do is love,

and the
Civil Rights Movement

and the
Anti-War Movement,

and all these assertions of the young
saying it's all possible

was an extraordinary
moment in time.

And here we are
at a moment in time

where all of that view
has been swept away.

The triumph,
I would say,

of a dark vision of meanness,
of stupidity, of arrogance.

That seems to be so pervasive
all over the world, not only--

not only in
Washington.

But you realize things change,
and not necessarily for the better.

Then it's simply a condition
that you have to play your part,

and your part is to be
on this side of the line.

I mean,
that's my view of it.

[Bernard] Milton is now
starting projects

and he'll take them
to someone

the way he did
buttons for the nation.

The nation didn't
commission buttons.

Milton said,
"You've gotta start doing this."

[Vanden Heuvel] What he
has done beyond,

above and beyond
the pro bono

work with the design
of the magazine

is in these last years
he's had these great ideas,

and he comes--
came to us with this button series.

He will send them, you know,
in the middle of the night or--

and they're so much a part of
what he's thinking about.

Facts not fear.

That is so much part of
what Milton believes:

the danger of a kind of
Messianic belief system--

much more important
to inform and enlighten.

So, Milton has sent us
a slew of buttons

over these
last few years

which we publish in the magazine
and our readers devour,

and we take them to student conferences
and students love them,

and it's always wonderful
to see people wearing them--

not just Nation readers,
but they move around.

[Bernard] If you look at
any of his recent work,

he's increasingly thinking
about world issues

and wants to
design in a way

that can help the causes
that he's interested in.

[Heller] What he brings
to this conversation

is more than idealism;
it's true eloquence.

It's more than a
doctrinaire philosophy;

it's a humanist
philosophy.

And after all these years
of practicing,

of seeing design
go up and down,

graphic design go up and down
as a practice of importance,

he wants to imbue it
with a sense of a real gravitas.

[Glaser] Starting four or
five years ago,

I realized I didn't have
the right to be indifferent

or to ignore
what was going on.

And since I have some talent
for communicating ideas,

I thought I might
use that talent

or else feel like a real jerk
for the rest of my life.

[Tabibian] Milton, he's got
qualities and characteristics

that are both great
and contradictory.

He and his wife lead
a perfectly private life.

[Glaser] How are ya?

[♪]

[Tabibian] He has a house
in Woodstock, New York.

He reproduced
Claude Monet's studio.

So he's very, very private
in his personal life,

but he's the most
public man in New York.

But public
for the public good.

[Glaser]
It isn't possible for me

to separate my work
from my life in general,

and certainly not my life
from this city.

Here you have these
extraordinary strands of differences,

existing simultaneously and,
in some curious way, advantageously.

So it's all of the people
who live here.

There really is
nothing like it.

I mean, it does-- New York does the job
that America's supposed to do.

It really takes everybody
and not only accepts them

but responds to them,
and that's a big deal.

I mean, if you come to New York
from another place,

nobody forces you
to become a New Yorker

in terms of an attitude
or a spirit.

It-- the city is
enormously accommodating.

Not to mention
the extraordinary gift

that the city gives you
of education.

This is the best town in the world
to be educated.

The number of schools,
the amount of free events,

lectures,
classes--

I mean,
no place on earth!

You can study anything
that you want,

any time,
anywhere in this city.

All of these opportunities--
being able to go to the Metropolitan,

being able to study at
the Art Students League,

being able to go to
a superb high school

like the High School
of Music & Art--

all of that sort of contributed
to my well-being,

to my understanding,
to my history, to my passion.

It's not possible.

It would not have been possible for me
to have been what I am

and to have done what I've done
any place else on earth.

This is the town
that made it possible.

[♪]