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Milton Glaser

I have never been a huge fan of Milton Glaser. I don't mean that in a bad way at all, just that he was never a huge "hero" for me as a designer. Now, one of his employees, on the other hand is quite inspiring. Deborah Adler did some really nice work on the Target medicine bottle. That, and she is pretty cute. This idea of simplification inspired me to redesign our lab requisitions when I used to work at a medical lab; I will post more about that later.

Back on track. Here are some very interesting statements, particularly regarding style, made by Mr. Glaser when he spoke at BYU. These comments were recorded by John Dilworth, whose blog I just stumbled across on accident. I had some comments, but I felt that Milton’s words by themselves were perfect, and anything I wrote detracted from the message.

On not developing a unique style: “If people know what you do, they have power over you.”

On style: “I fear arriving at a level of competence (in a specific style) and then being doomed to repeat it forever.”

On intuition: “Our intuition is smarter than our intellect.”

On drawing: “(exercising your drawing skills once a week is) much better than going to the gym.”

On words: “Words are images.”

On art: “fine art is art that has had the impurities removed.” “fine art is art that is created purely with the intent of producing a spiritual effect on the viewer.”

On learning: “(The greatest achievement of my life) has been being able to wake up learn something new each day.”

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