The purpose of Art

....... is to inform and delight.

When we think about art (and art in its plurality), there are only a few artists who have serious impact in everyday life. Milton Glaser is one among them.

He is one of the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States. His work is easy to spot in a lineup -- it's simple, direct and clear, while leaping over conceptual boundaries, so that his work connects directly to the viewer like a happy virus. His best-known work may be the I [heart] N Y logo -- an image so ubiquitous, it's hard to believe there was a time when it didn't exist.

All through his career, he didn’t trust styles and was clearly against the institutionalization of design.

His other well-known work includes a cache of posters that defined the style of the '60s and early '70s, and numerous logos, including such instantly familiar identities as Barron's and the Brooklyn Brewery, the psychedelic Bob Dylan poster.

“The hallmarks of his work are its simplicity, wit and elegance; it may be commercial art, but with a capital A. ” — Stephen Holden, New York Times

He is the subject of the 2009 documentary film To Inform and Delight: The World of Milton Glaser. He is a co-founder of New York magazine and helped set that magazine's honest and irreverent tone. He has had the distinction of one-man-shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center. His presence and impact on the profession internationally is formidable. 

Immensely creative and articulate, he is a modern renaissance man — one of a rare breed of intellectual designer-illustrators, who brings a depth of understanding and conceptual thinking, combined with a diverse richness of visual language, to his highly inventive and individualistic work.

Information and images courtesy: http://www.miltonglaser.com/

http://www.ted.com/talks/milton_glaser_on_using_design_to_make_ideas_new