HERB LUBALIN

By Lucila Lombardi

Born 1918, Herb Lubalin was an American graphic designer and typographer whose work ranges from packaging, type design and advertising. He is mainly recognized for his work in several magazines, his creation of the typeface ITC Avant Garde, and establishing expressive typography.

Herb started his journey in design at the early age of 17, when he was admitted to Cooper Union School in Manhattan, New York. Though showing very little connection to art before this, during his time at Cooper Union, Lubalin showed interest in seeing the differences in types and seeing their relationship to the sound of the letters and the subject they were depicting. He graduated in 1939 and went on to work as a freelance designer and typographer. Though he claims to have done nothing important during this time, for the next 25 years of his life, Lubalin worked as an art director for agencies including Deutsch & Shea, Fairchild Publications, Reiss Advertising and Sudler & Hennessey. He worked in Sudler and Hennessey for 20 years before he started his personal firm, called Herb Lubalin inc. (1964). He also won his first New York Art Directors Club Gold Medal for his work at Sudler & Hennessey. Lubalin worked creating countless, incredible logos, which include a calligraphic logo of “The Bible” for John Houston’s film, Marriage, Families, Mother & Child, Cooper Union, Festival ’78, Dimension, Look Paris, and the World Trade Center logo — just to name a few. Something to notice from all of Lubalin’s logos is that they provide a playful yet effective way to describe the subject or idea that they’re showing. For example, in the Mother & Child logo presents the ampersand within the O in the word “mother”, which symbolically represents a child within the mother’s womb. This is

clever considering that is what the subject of the magazine is about: a mother and her child. Families is also a creative solution to a logo. Much like the Mother & Child logo, Families incorporates its lettering to the subject it is representing, taking advantage of the “ili” within the word “families” and using them to represent people.

One of Lubalin’s most interesting pieces is probably the PBS logo. The PBS logo’s journey and process into becoming what it is is probably the most interesting part of the whole story. PBS went to Lubalin asking for a new logo design.They explained that they had about two hundred TV stations but people thought that PBS was only local, so Herb Lubalin’s task was to give them a global image. So first, they came up with the PBS lettering with three blue stars and red and white stripes on the bottom half of the three letters, but being so reflective of the American flag, PBS asked to focus on the stars and get rid of the stripes. Adding two more stripes to the lettering (acting as the holes for P, B and S), PBS thought that the logo had too many stars now. Asking to work with one star now, however, his designs with the stars continued to be too specific or singling out a specific idea that PBS and Lubalin decided to try out another American symbol - an eagle. His first eagle PBS logo was problematic due to the fact that it was facing left, which was something that PBS was avoiding since they were often thought as a liberal network. Lubalin, then, moved the eagle to be facing right, but then PBS was wondering if the eagle could look a bit more cheerful.After a failed attempt to fix the eagle, PBS and Lubalin decided that the solution was within the name itself - Public Broadcasting Service. Public means people, so it would make sense to make the P look like a person.They were happy with the idea and final production of the but were not so happy with the colors, so they were changed around. Lastly, they were not convinced with the person looking left again, but Lubalin thought that it would be impossible to change the positioning of the person’s head because

it would look bad with his “nose” up on the back of B, thus creating the final for the PBS logo by Herb Lubalin. Today, they have taken this beginning of Lubalin’s logo and have only tweaked it a little bit, but though the logo seems simple, the process was quite complex through specific problems solving and even the discarding of great ideas to fit within a client’s concerns.

Throughout his career, Herb Lubalin was able to collaborate with Ralph Ginzburg in three magazine projects - Fact, Eros, and Avant Garde. These three specific magazines happened to be very important and relevant to the ideas of the time (1960s and 1970s). The impact and influence of these magazines allowed for Herb Lubalin to be responsible of some of many of the manifesting ideas and concepts of graphic design and art, even if the longest running time of the magazines were only for three years (Avant Garde). Most of these magazines displayed a tendency to focus on experimentation and the growth of the sense of sexuality and counterculture, which was what this time period is mainly known for.

Fact magazine was a magazine which focused on several topics, mainly controversial, ranging from culture and politics to sex. The magazine did not last very long due to a controversial article that messaged that the presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was not in good mental health to be running for president of the United States, which led for them to be sued, however, this did not stop the magazine from being an influential work for the time.

Eros magazine was similar to Fact magazine considering that it focused on controversial topics, but instead of expanding to topics for culture and politics, it was composed of articles and photo- essays on topics having to do with love and sex. It was a quarterly magazine and was hardbound, which made it very expensive to produce. Lubalin’s freedom in Eros magazine was blatant, through his beautiful compositions in covers and spreads. One of his most interesting ones was a series of spreads titled “Black and White”. Though amazing work, it is a good example of what caused the magazine to be shut down, since the controversial topics and photographs caused Ginzburg to be indicted for distributing what was thought as obscene literature through the mail. Avant Garde magazine, the longer-living magazine of the three was their solution to their previously failed projects.

The first problem that they had to tackle in their new publication was the creation of the logo. Lubalin was influenced by Ginzburg’s idea to capture “the advanced,the innovative,the creative”,and Ginzburg’s wife’s suggestion to “imagine a European Airport” and “a jet taking off into the future” (quotes from A Brief History in Avant Garde by Duane King) which helped the creation of the logo to Avant Garde magazine. He later went on to make it into a full typeface (which is what is used within this article).The typeface underwent a lot of criticism due to people using it in the wrong contexts and eventually leading to having the typeface become a cliché of the time. Many designers had their thoughts on the typeface, such as Ed Benguiat who said “the only place Avant Garde looks good is in the words Avant Garde,” and Tony Di Spigna (a partner of Lubalin’s) who said that it was “the world’s most abused typeface”.

In addition to the infamous Avant Garde typeface, Herb Lubalin’s influential work had to do with the magazine’s page layout as well. His type would be either full page titles full of large text, or different hierarchies of text within a page, justified to the margins. An example of this can be seen to the 13th issue of Avant Garde’s cover. This cover demonstrates the fully justified text as well as the large letter titles on a full page. It also shows the simplicity in Lubalin’s designs, yet careful thought on the layouts. His big bold titles did not just stop at the magazine covers, but continued in other designs, including posters geared against war and the beginning of the influence can even be seen in pages from his and Gnzburg’s old magazine, Fact magazine.

After Avant Garde, and until his death, Lubalin worked in the production of U&lc magazine, standing for uppercase and lowercase. U&lc magazine was a production of Lubalin and ITC (the International Typeface Corporation), which had just been recently founded. ITC was important at the time because it was the first type foundry to not work with metal type.

Within the pages of U&lc you could find many varieties of type related things, like images and illustrations and fonts that ITC was producing at the time. It was very successful in its selling due to the increasing movement towards digital and expressive type.

Another of Herb Lubalin’s work that is worth noticing is a book cover
for Reginald Reynolds’s 1949 book “Beards”, which display one of the most creative type solutions for its subject. In this particular piece of work, Lubalin displays a more expressive set of type compared to his Avant Garde or type that he used in his other publications.In Reynolds’s book titled “Beards”, Lubalin does no other but create a beard out of the word itself.The use of decorative curls and arch within the word work well with the design idea because of the balance that Lubalin considers into his frame. His use of the hierarchy within the lettering make the page almost seem symmetrical.Also,his decorative elements create visual interest through the depiction of curly beard hair through the curls in the letters as well as the consistency throughout.

A few other works to consider are his packaging.Lubalin designed a Pepsi can concept, which displayed large title type and a hierarchy of letters, like his other projects. In summary, Herb Lubalin has a major variety of different kind of work. He can be clean and simple, or very expressive in his type, he designs for great causes (like the anti-war poster) or controversial subjects like Eros, Fact or Avant Garde. He is multi taltented, working with the creation of type, layout of pages, ideas for packaging, etc, but the most important part of his work is that he has demonstrated an understanding for all kinds of ideas and executed each of them with both the seriousness and playfulness necessary to be impactful to an audience. Lubalin’s talented self even jokes that had he not split an egg with his half brother, he would’ve probably been George Lois (from Meetinghouse Herb Lubalin article by Cindiana). Thinking about how incredible and thoughtful his work was and still is today, it is interesting to think that such productions could come from someone who’s only interest towards art initially was his very erotic drawings of Tarzan and Jane, which at the time only gave him a reputation to be a pervert, would later be a possible influence to what made his work in Eros, Fact or Avant Garde such an important set of work to the people of his time and today. Herb Lubalin should not only be an inspiration to great designers today, but those who are struggling to find their image. Lubalin embraced his projects and tackled them with dedication to get a point across. He was not afraid of what could happen based on his artistic decisions, considering the amount of problems him and Ginzburg had with the law with their publications, because in the end, with all his inspiration and relevancy in type and design everywhere, every criticism and every shut down projects, was all worth it.

Bibliography:

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King, Duane. “A Brief History of Avant Garde.” Thinking for a Living RSS. N.p., 13 July 2009. Web. 13 Mar. 2014. <http://www.thinkingforaliving.org/archives/147>.