Milton Glaser is dead at 91. His life and work are exhilarating.

For the Dylan poster, a promotional piece included in the 1967 album “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits,” he created a simple outline of the singer’s head, based on a black-and-white self-portrait silhouette by Marcel Duchamp, and added thick, wavy bands of color for the hair, forms he imported from Islamic art.

… [Glaser] studied etching with the still-life painter Giorgio Morandi and, in the time-honored way, drew from plaster casts. The experience left him a fervent believer in the discipline of drawing and an enemy of found images and collage in design work.

“A designer who must rely on cutouts and rearranging to create effects, who cannot achieve the specific image or idea he wants by drawing, is in trouble,” he told the magazine Graphis in 1960.

(William Grimes, “Milton Glaser, Master Designer of ‘I ♥ NY’ Logo, Is Dead at 91,” NYTimes, 6-26-20)

(c) 2020 JMN