The Greatest Designers of our Age #5: Herb Lubalin
The quiet genius
From a very early age, I was fascinated with all of Herb’s work. His work to me represents that golden period of 60’s and 70’s, before computers came into our design lives. Hand drawn type and hours over the drawing board. He was a long time friend and collaborator of Lou Dorfsman, who I found out about around the same time, when doing my research at art school. (More on Lou’s ultra-genius later). Herb’s work was so incredibly varied. He could create wonderous, swirling scripts, stylish typography and typefaces that changed the world. He was also highly skilled in bold branding, logotypes and advertising and an expert in magazine design.
Such incredible skills cemented Lou’s wonderful legend in the halls of Design fame, and ensured his legacy would live on, through his typefaces and the influences (known and unknown) that he has on future generations of creatives around the world…
Herb Lubalin, (pronounced Loo-bal-in, apparently) over his lifetime, won various recognitions for his innovative designs in publications, advertising, and books.
He was once described as “an individual that can churn out huge amounts of work without looking hurried, frantic, or ruffled.” This was seen in his profile published in the March 1981 issue of U&If., the International Journal of Typographics.
“Mr. Lubalin is one of the best graphic designers to have existed”—Louis Silverstein, the corporate art director and managing editor of the New York Times.
Lou Dorfsman, the creative director and vice president of CBD Inc., describes him as “a quiet individual who has an enormous talent” and “typographic impresario of our time”. Quite a beautiful accolade.
Herbert Frederick Lubalin was a 1939 graduate of Cooper Union. He was born on March 17, 1918, in New York City. By the year 1945, after being an art director for Fairchild Publications and other various advertising companies, Lubalin became a vice president, Creative director, and art director of Suder & Hennessy. This company began life as a design studio, before evolving into an all-out advertising agency.
Herb was widely known to apply an inventive use of typography on almost all his works and developed designs for broadly diverse publications and redesigned periodicals like the News Leader, Saturday Evening Post, Eros, and Readers digest.
He also believed that the critical factor in redesigning a magazine or a newspaper was to help interpret and fortify the editorial material. (Not to showcase the designers skills). When he redesigned the New Leader (a political magazine that was born in 1923), he embedded this methodology by focusing on simple bold headlines with a graphic dynamic and simplicity unseen in any other publications.
Amongst some of his lesser known projects were designs for packaging and logotype for Sprite, a Coca-Cola company soft drink introduced in the 1960s. Strangely, the same year, he also designed the Front cover of “Fact:” magazine, which ran a scathing critique of Coca-Cola, and how detrimental the all-American drink was for the public’s health. His talents were applied to numerous and varied projects: producing graphics for almost everything from “Chicken of Sea” tuna and Bazooka bubble gum (my own personal favourite as a kid. Reading those Bazooka Joe cartoons gave me endless joy, imagining what the United States was all about.)
Herb Lubalin is quoted as saying that “there exist about 2,000 typefaces that a good art director should be aware of.” Also stating that an art director who knows what he is doing, should know the various strong points of each of these typefaces and the best way to use them. I must admit, I’m not up to the task. I think at max I probably could name about 50. Not bad, I thought. *sad face emoji*
During the 60’s, the existing typefaces simply weren’t good enough for Mr. Herb. He went on and created more of his own. One of his most famous designed typefaces is the legendary avant-garde – one of the most enduring and brilliant typefaces ever created.
The font itself is bold and brash, a mixture of hard angels and symmetrical circles. Unlike most other fonts though, avant garde is unlike any other font, now or then – and this is what makes it such an incredible piece of work.
The font came to represent the looseness of the sixties and the flared out corduroy of the 70’s and eventually it’s ubiquity led to it’s gradual receding from pop culture. As with all fashionable items, they go out of fashion, then about 20 years later, re-appear. The font was brought back into the public eye again, via some beautiful work by independiente for a variety of Travis albums.
Herb was one hell of a designer. What a body of work he left behind! @ Lubalin I must admit, I’ve never been a fan of using Avant Garde myself. But this is down to my own deficiencies as a designer, I confess. Maybe I never paid for the right cut of the font? (Excuses excuses.) Apparently when Adobe first produced it for mac, it was a basic version that excluded all the funky ligatures. Which explains a lot, as that’s the most interesting part of the bloody font. Typical Adobe. Always killing the buzz, man. I believe there were several version of the typeface, one for headlines and the other for body copy etc. Just as well – man, that headline type in body copy would have been a nightmare! Whenever I tried to work with it though, it just looked like shit. I suppose this is the difference between me and Herb!
Whenever I’ve seen any of Herb’s work with Avant Garde, I’m truly impressed. What masterworks they are! Note to self: must try harder.
Magazines
Early on in his career, Lubalin made many design friendships that would last his entire career: Lou Dorfsman, George Louis and many more. One of these relationships would be particularly fruitful – his relationship with the Journalist Ralph Ginzburg. Ginzburg courted controversy throughout his career, through his provocative content he draped over the American public. He worked closely with Lubalin on their many co-founded magazines. Eros, in 1962, Fact, from 1964-1967, and Avant Garde from 1968-1971. All of these magazines are beautifully documented here. These beautiful magazine designs are true works of art, from an era when “The Big Idea” mattered most. You’ll notice how uncluttered these designs are. A simple cover, only the masthead and an image. Some of them didn’t even have any type on them! Can you imagine that happening today? My god they’d have a heart attack! “How is anybody going to know what’s in the magazine?!” (not that anyone reads magazines these days anyway…)
The Eros cover with Marilyn Monroe is particularly magnificent. I imagine Herb must have been hugely thrilled to be creating work with such rarified content. He did a great job too. I love the contacts laid on out, as if they were on a Lightbox, with a small paragraph at the bottom. So insanely stylish. Even better in the spread inside, with one of the contacts scored out with photographers pen. That is such a brilliant, clever, contrarian concept. And to put it full page is just divine.
Herb’s work with Ginzburg was often controversial. So much so that eventually Ginzburg was put in jail for his provocative content. Herb was closely aligned with not just the design of the magazines that were the output of this partnership – he was very much a part of the content creation as well. When Ginzburg was jailed, Herb later commented “I should’ve gone to gone to jail‚ too.” Herb’s passion for democracy and progression often clashed with his necessity for income. It seemed for a while that there was indeed internal conflict for him, designing for large corporations like Coca-Cola, whilst also wanting to champion freedom of expression and libertarianism. This is outlined in his work for Sprite, and in the same year his anti corporate work on the cover of Fact.
Later in his life, Herb managed to free himself from any kind of paymaster, and his gratitude was there for all to see. He knew he was lucky and appreciated that he was one of the few designers who had no one telling him what to do and had no boss. This creative freedom came alive through his co-founding of the U&Lc (upper and lower case magazine) and also the ITC type manufacturer in 1970 by Aaron Burns, Herb Lubalin and Edward Rondthaler.
Not only was Herb an expert calligrapher and designer, he was also a master illustrator. Here we have the beautiful Eve, emerging from the dense undergrowth of the garden of Eden. After Lubalin pitched a naked Eve illustration, the German branch of the cigarette company insisted that Eve be covered from head to toe in the leafy garden. Before they would commit to printing and distributing the design, they insisted that they receive a model release form confirming that the model was over 25 years old! Did no one tell them it was only an illustration? Chill out guys! How beautiful are these cigarettes? you would just have to smoke them. This was all done in the days before smoking was bad for you. Back then, it was all just damn fine smokey goodness.
eve cigarettes In 1969, when cigarettes were good for you, Herb was designing beautiful packaging for the tobacco giants. This stunning example of packaging design shows us just how gorgeous cigarette packaging was before governments got their paws into them, with their intentionally-crap death messages. I’m not a smoker, but on my recent trip to cigarettes-loving Tokyo, I actually purchased a Marlboro menthol multipack from the airport, just because it was so beautiful. I love this design from Herb, and I realise now it even makes use of Lou Dorfman’s CBD Didot! Quite resplendant with its gold leaf finish. The Helvetica light, floating just above it (Name of the manufacturer) “Reemtsma” is slightly peculiar, but as it’s Helvetica, we’ll let it go. Not sure what is happening in the “O” of Sorte either. Chess piece? Chimney? But the real magic here is the lovely security tab on the top, with its image of a tobacco plant, printed with a red tint over the top. If Gucci made cigarettes, it would look like this.
The 1960’s were a new dawn in creative advertising. Punchy copy and huge portraits were immensely popular. Herb was at the forefront on this design evolution, right in the heart of Madison avenue.
For those of you looking for further reading on the genius of Herb, I thoroughly recommend this insanely great website, Lubalin100. If only every great designer of our age had such a deserving website! Maybe we should do it here…..*thinks*
A final note goes to Lou Dorfsman, who’s final tribute at Lubalin’s memorial service at the Great Hall of Cooper Union:
“Herb had the joy of knowing as a certainty that his existence was no empty absurdity, that he made an important contribution to, and revolutionised his profession, and had set its course for decades to come.”
Thank you Herb, for your wonderful, inspirational work.
