SVA Archives

July 01, 2019

Milton Glaser's Early Book Covers

Milton Glaser's early book covers, done not long after he founded Push Pin Studios with Seymour Chwast, served as a kind of laboratory for the techniques and styles he was exploring in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Book jacket for The Cook with extended Giacometti-like black ink figure with chef's hat on a bright green background.

March 22, 2016

Milton Glaser for MGM, 1970

Some background (and forgotten drafts?) of Milton Glaser’s poster for Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point.

October 28, 2015

Identified Flying Objects

Milton Glaser’s surreal landscapes for Hangar Design Group.

August 28, 2015

Milton Glaser for Creative Newspaper, 1982

Click through for the full image.

August 04, 2015

65 Self-Portraits

65 Self-Portraits is one of the best documented of the remarkable series of exhibitions organized by Shirley Glaser while she was director of SVA’s Visual Arts Gallery, 1964-1969.

July 21, 2015

Milton Glaser’s cover for Aaron Lightman’s self-titled LP

This amazing LP from 1969 is one of the most beautiful hidden gems in the field of pop arranged singer-songwriters. Originally issued on Poppy Records, home of psych heads The Mandrake Memorial among others, Lightman’s LP deserves to be discovered by all the fans of the soft rock, orchestra arranged sounds. Think of an American reply to the early works of Duncan Browne, Bill Fay, Nick Garrie or even Donovan at his most popsike recordings. Fans of the early Bee Gees will also enjoy this LP! Credit for the arrangements and production goes to the great Ron Frangipane and David Christopher, who is also credited as a co-writer of the albums songs. The album came housed in a beautiful Milton Glaser sleeve (Glaser was the main designer at Poppy at that time) which the Wah Wah reissue respects, and featured an insert with the lyrics which is also reproduced on our reissue. Housed in quality sleeves and pressed in 180 gram thick black vinyl for the delight of the most discriminating audiophiles. Limited to 500 copies!

May 21, 2015

Milton Glaser’s Boris Vian

Milton Glaser’s watercolors for a French edition of Boris Vian’s I Spit On Your Graves.

December 10, 2014

Portraits of Pnin

Several incarnations of Vladimir Nabokov’s most lovable protagonist, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin.

December 04, 2014

Milton Glaser for 7 Up

Milton Glaser’s finely detailed sketches for a 7 Up advertising campaign.

November 24, 2014

Pop pourri, part 2

Reader Don O’Hara sent us a few additional iterations of the Jem “Classic Series” we featured last week.

November 19, 2014

Pop pourri

Milton Glaser was hired by Deluxe Communications Corporation/Jem to design a set of LP sleeves for oldies releases they called The Classic Series.

November 13, 2014

Skeleton key

Forever potent and still open to interpretation despite its ubiquity, the skeleton has surfaced many times in the early work of Milton Glaser.

October 21, 2014

Chinese Grocery

Really a sister project of Milton Glaser and Jerome Snyder’s Underground Gourmet column for New York magazine, Glaser’s “Chinese Grocery” poster sought to guide the uninitiated through a Chinatown market, in this case the no longer extant United Supermarket at 84 Mulberry Street.