Artist of the day: Artist of the day, November 23, 2021: Herb Lubalin, an American graphic designer (#1425)

Herbert F. (Herb) Lubalin (1918 – 1981) was color-blind and ambidextrous American graphic designer with political convictions, a supporter of liberal causes. Lubalin rejected Swiss modernism, which he felt was ill-suited to the popular American imagination, in favor of vernacular, decorative, and humanistic approaches to visual expression.

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.”

After graduating in 1939, Lubalin had a difficult time finding work; he was fired from his job at a display firm after requesting a raise from $8/week (around US$100 in 2006 currency) to $10.

Lubalin would briefly land at Reiss Advertising, and then (in 1945) at Sudler & Hennessey, where he worked for 19 years. Lubalin and John J. Graham created the original NBC Peacock in 1957 at Sudler. The Cooper Union web book 100 Days of Herb Lubalin (day 46) displays a Sudler ad from the 1950s that shows Andy Warhol, Art Kane and John Pistilli were among his employees.

Most people recognize the name Herb Lubalin in association with the typeface Avant Garde. And he was the typographer and designer behind its creation, after the success of Avant Garde Magazine and its typographic logo. But, his career spanned a much wider scope than that. One of the people behind the culture-shocking magazines Avant-Garde, Eros and Fact, he was a constant boundary breaker on both a visual and social level. Part of the founding team of the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) and the principal of Herb Lubalin, Inc. it was hard to escape the reach of Herb during the 1960s and 70s.

His constant search for something new and a passion for inventiveness made him one of the most successful art directors of the 20th century. He had offices internationally in Paris and London and partnered with many talented individuals over the years including Aaron Burns, Tom Carnase, Ernie Smith and Ralph Ginzburg. A graduate of the Cooper Union in New York he spent time as a visiting professor there as well as designed a logo for them. Constantly working and achieving much success throughout his career, at the age of 59 he proclaimed "I have just completed my internship."

But it is Lubalin and his typographics—words, letters, pieces of letters, additions to letters, connections and combinations, and virtuoso manipulation of letters—to which all must return. The “typographic impresario of our time,” Dorfsman called him, a man who “profoundly influenced and changed our vision and perception of letter forms, words and language.”

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