Milton Glaser may have passed on, but his legacy and influence at the School of Visual Arts are everlasting. The legendary graphic designer behind the “I ♥ New York” logo, longtime SVA faculty member and acting chairman of the SVA Board, passed away last year, on June 26, 2020, his 91st birthday. Glaser’s bold, eclectic design work and graceful humanism helped shape American design over his prolific 65-year career, but it also had a profound effect on the ethos of the College.

The College has put together many honors and acknowledgments to commemorate him this academic year. One of them is the recently released Glaser Gazette newsletter, celebrating his many achievements. Another is a striking banner with his portrait that went up on the exterior upper wall of the SVA Main Building at 209 East 23rd Street, which reads, “Thank you. SVA ♥ Milton Glaser,” a tribute to the indelible mark he left on the school.

The photo of Glaser on the banner was taken by Michael Somoroff, a conceptual artist, director, photographer and friend. Somoroff knew Glaser from a very young age through his father Ben Somoroff, a celebrated still-life photographer whose works were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and who worked with Glaser throughout the years during the Mag Men era of New York City in the 1960s and 70s. Somoroff became his father’s assistant, then his studio manager and worked with the many artists who frequented the studio, like Glaser.

In 2016, Somoroff was putting together a photography project about his artistic heroes and “certainly, [Glaser] was one of them,” he said in a recent interview with SVA. Glaser gave him his start for New York Magazine and to pay his own tribute, Somoroff asked him if he could take his portrait. Glaser agreed and those warm, striking, inquisitive portraits quickly became defining photos, with some of them used in eulogies, celebrations and obituaries about the late artist.

Somoroff said he and Glaser reminisced about that Mag Men period during the photo shoot, with the designer noting how it was a special time. “That was really a moment,” Somoroff recalled about Glaser’s affectionate and simple remembrance of that time. “In those days, there was an explosion of creativity,” he added. “There was a lot of cross-germination of ideas, technology and craft and…all this spectacular work that was done in the ’60s and early ’70s was very much the result, as Milton put it, ‘a moment’.”

“Working with Milton was always intelligent. There was always a strong concept that we were managing,” Somoroff recalled. “Most importantly, there was a deep respect on Milton’s part for the talent he had chosen to collaborate with, and you felt that…the pressure of being deeply appreciated.”

Below, Somoroff talks about how the photograph of Glaser came to be, the photo shoot itself and more recollections about his time working with and around his artistic hero at his father’s famous design studio.

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