Gill’s influential work as a designer, illustrator, copywriter, author and educator had earned him the London Art Directors and Designers Lifetime Achievement Award, membership in the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame and in 2018, he sat for an interview for the SVA Subway Series Hall of Fame video series (see below), joining fellow design icons like Milton Glaser, George Tscherny and Ivan Chermayeff.

Gill was a co-founder, in 1960, of Fletcher Forbes Gill (forerunner of Pentagram), designer of films, musical events (he co-created Beatlemania), commercials and author of 19 books, including the anthology Bob Gill, So Far (2011), billed as “the definitive work of one of the most important and innovative designers/illustrators/teachers of his generation.”

Gill was known for his witty one-liners, pithy proclamations and cheekily titled books, like Forget All the Rules You Ever Learned About Graphic Design, Including the Ones in This Book (1981) and Graphic Design Made Difficult (1982). “I’m not interested in the problem; I’m interested in the solution!” he said in his Subway Series video—the kind of emphatic maxim he was always espousing.

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