‘I Love NY’ logo designer dies

Milton Glaser, the groundbreaking graphic designer who adorned Bob Dylan’s silhouette with psychedelic hair and summed up the feelings for his native New York with “I (HEART) NY,” died Friday, his 91st birthday, of a stroke.

In posters, logos, advertisements and book covers, Glaser’s ideas captured the spirit of the 1960s with a few simple colours and shapes. He was the designer on the team that founded New York magazine with Clay Felker in the late ’60s. “Around our office, of course, he will forever be one of the small team of men and women that, in the late sixties, yanked New York out of the newspaper morgue and turned it into a great American magazine,” the magazine’s obituary of Glaser said.

His pictorial sense was so profound, and his designs so influential, that his works in later years were preserved by collectors and studied as fine art. But he preferred not to use the term “art” at all. The bold “I (HEART) NY” logo — cleverly using typewriter-style letters as the typeface — was dreamed up as part of an ad campaign begun in 1977 to boost the state’s image when crime and budget troubles dominated the headlines. Glaser did the design free of charge.

Nearly a quarter-century later, just days after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, he revised it, adding a dark scar to the red heart and “more than ever” to the message.

His 1966 illustration of Dylan put in graphic form the 1960s philosophy that letting your hair fly free was a way to free your mind.