If graphic design has a grand master, then Milton Glaser is Michelangelo. The Dylan poster. The oh-so-ripped-off “I ‘Heart’ NY” logo. The image for Angels in America. New York magazine. Everything else.

Glaser has worked nonstop for over forty-five years, co-founding the revolutionary Pushpin Studios in 1954, launching New York magazine with Clay Felker in 1968, establishing Milton Glaser, Inc. in 1974, and teaming with Walter Bernard in 1983 to form the publication design firm WBMG. Throughout his career, Glaser has created hundreds of posters and prints, and his artwork has been featured in exhibits worldwide, including one-man shows at both the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In 1973 he published what is widely regarded as the first graphic design monograph, Milton Glaser: Graphic Design, and in 2000 he published Art Is Work—essentially “Episode II” of his professional life.

We talked on a stifling July afternoon in the small conference room of his adorable, toylike brownstone in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. Fun fact: Throughout the interview Mr. Glaser held in either hand (and occasionally waved) a bright piggy-pink colored pencil.

—Chip Kidd

“AND IT CAME TO ME AS AN IMAGE, YOU KNOW,
IT’S A MARK, IT’S A BLACK MARK ON THE HEART.”

CHIP KIDD: You write in Art is Work that the very famous “I ‘Heart’ New York” logo you designed was originally proposed as something else.

MILTON GLASER: Yes.

CK: And what was the something else?

MG: It was just a little typographical solution with two lozenges and a word in it, two ovals, and the word inside it; it was not in any way distinguished. But I always thought the whole thing was going to be a three-month campaign.

CK: Sheez.

MG: It was like one of those things you bang out because it didn’t seem to merit any more attention.

CK: [Laughs]

MG: But even so, I said, “This [the first solution] isn’t good enough,” And I tell the anecdote. You just never understand what makes certain ideas that you have cling to people.

CK: But it saved New York.

MG: I have to say that when you do something that you really feel is useful—when you have a positive social effect—it makes you feel great.

CK: God, I can’t imagine. At the time you got the assignment, did it really feel like, “Shit, New York is doomed”?

MG: Well, it was the mid-seventies, a terrible moment in the city. Morale was at the bottom of the pit. I always say you can tell by the amount of dog shit in...