Language of the ♥

One week away from graduation, and Princeton feels more empty than ever. Most of the rooms in my hall have been abruptly evacuated of student presence, rendered uniformly barren by the post-exams mass move-out. This liminal limbo known as “dead week” is a bit too much for me to take. I’ve already had to say good-bye to many friends I am unlikely to see again in the foreseeable future, but it has yet to hit home that next Tuesday will mark the end of my life as a Princeton undergraduate.

I am finding it helpful to meditate on the future. Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave an impressive keynote speech at Carnegie Mellon’s commencement a few days ago, where he imparted these thoughts to the graduating class: “In a world where everything is kept and remembered forever — the world you are graduating into — you should live for the future and the things you really care about. Don’t live in the past. Live in the future…You’ll find today is the best chance you have to start being unreasonable, to demand excellence, to drive change, to make everything happen.”

We are often asked to imagine the world we want to live in — an idealist’s exercise that is as hopeful as it is naive. Our burden, however, is not merely to dream; it is to act. On Friday, I went to New York to see some old friends and had the opportunity to see the opening of Wendy Keys’ new biographical documentary on Milton Glaser, possibly the world’s best-known graphic designer. What struck me most about the trajectory of this incredible man is his uncompromising commitment to design that exposes and reinforces the connectivity of lived experiences: to him, design is what reminds people about their shared humanity, lest they destroy each other in selfish conquest.

Milton Glaser, graphic design legend

Quoting the Roman poet Horace, Glaser posits that the purpose of design is to “inform and delight.” As founder of New York magazine and creator of the iconic I ♥ NY rebus, among other brilliant designs, he has inspired generations of designers to create work that is simple but not simplistic, personal but not selfish, and hopeful but not naive.

The reason why I ♥ NY worked, he notes in the film, is that letting your audience engage their problem-solving faculties instead of telling them what to think inspires a certain memorability. Though he did not earn a single cent on the design, Glaser feels a deep sense of satisfaction at having participated in the cultural and spiritual reinvigoration of his then-moribund city, giving New York a soulful sensibility it could live by. The logo is quite possibly the most imitated mark in American history, inspiring numerous parodies (I ♠ My Pets) and the popular <3 emoticon.

What inspires me most is that the man refuses to retire. Nearly 80, he is still teaching and producing work that evinces a deep-seated sense of social responsibility. He recently produced a book and exhibition called The Design of Dissent, and he continues to create posters for the International Rescue Committee that raise awareness about the crisis in Darfur. It is clear to me that this is the kind of career I want — where going to work each morning is a joy that you want to experience every day until you can’t because you know what you are contributing is significant and inimitable.

I ♥ NY More Than Ever, created in the aftermath of 9/11

In an English class I took this year, we explored Roland Barthes’ theory that we experience images in two ways: studium and punctum. Studium refers to “meanings that are nameable…given cultural meanings that we understand at once,” which accounts for our ability to recognize brands, for example, because we’ve formed a sociocultural memory for them. Punctum, on the other hand, is “that accident which pricks me — but also bruises me, is poignant to me,” the power of an image to evoke a deeply personal response.

The genius of Milton Glaser’s work lies in its uncanny ability to do both: it cleverly references culture through visual metonymy, but also manages to hit home on an emotional level that transcends cultural referentiality. He argues that corporations have succeeded in manufacturing a desire for false experiences through design and uses his work both to expose that falsity and to overcome it with something genuine and forthright. In doing so, however, he avoids reductionist solutions that merely get the message across. Instead, Glaser manages to communicate with a sophisticated, emotionally-resonant vocabulary that is piercing and memorable.

Haunting designs for Tony Kushner’s Angels in America

What I also found fascinating is that Glaser received a Fulbright grant way back in 1952 to study painting in Bologna, Italy under Giorgio Morandi. He cites that postgraduate experience as the true beginning of his career, when he learned that good design is about constantly pushing forward and innovating rather than about getting stuck in any kind of stylistic complacency. He also developed a sincere love for food that has informed his work to this day.

I think my greatest fear is that I will fail miserably in my career as a designer because my formal skills are desperately insufficient. I am terrible at the traditional visual arts. I can’t draw, paint, or collage. As someone who’s coming into the field from a liberal arts background, I really have no idea what I’m getting myself into. In less than two weeks, I will begin work at Pentagram, one of the most prestigious firms in the world, and I don’t even know how to use an X-acto knife. It’s all kind of overwhelming and anxiety-inducing.

A punny poster for the Fulbright Alumni Association

While I will likely never have the success that Milton Glaser has had in terms of translating intellect and soulfulness into memorable visuals, it makes me hopeful to think that a social orientation to design is acceptable and even admirable. In a recent interview, he argued, “Every once in a while, there’s a degree of social consciousness among designers, but fundamentally they’re talking to themselves. Often it doesn’t go beyond that, because it’s more about relieving themselves of tension than communicating to people in an effort to change their minds. That’s a failure of design intelligence.”

For some reason, hearing about his experience makes me feel like I may actually make something of myself doing design. It makes me cautiously optimistic that my Fulbright year will be an important turning point, despite my fears to the contrary. As I’m thinking about the future, I think that I have to start to trust in the strength of my ambition.

Doing what you believe in and earning a living are not mutually irreconcilable tasks. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I am haunted by my parents’ warning that turning down graduate school to spend a year in London might be a foolish choice, and that pursuing graphic design as a career might not be sustainable. But I am very nearly a college graduate, and I have to make these decisions for myself. And it seems like they’re starting to think that things might actually work out in the long run.

The iconic Dylan Poster for CBS Records

In an interview with famed book designer Chip Kidd, Glaser put forth the following thought: “I mean, look, we have such a weird idea of the relationship of design to the culture, but—I believe the best people in the world are involved in making things. There’s this talk I give in which I compare the idea of Thanatos and Eros, the instinct towards death and the instinct towards life. And people who make things are on the side of Eros.”

This idea resonates with me because it suggests that intention matters, and that the act of making is itself a meaningful assertion of individual will that has productive implications for culture. If that is true, then it is idealistic but not foolish to believe that graphic design can be an agent of Eros. While design can easily be exploited to propagate intolerance and divisiveness — as it too often has been throughout our history — it can also serve as a language of the heart, a way to exemplify and strengthen that instinct towards life.

Despite its difficulties, I think that Princeton has always been about learning to choose life: to confront all challenges with a spirit of humility and charity; to stand fearless against cynicism and violence; to fight for the preservation and renewal of our most authentic selves. I hope that these beliefs will stay with me throughout the years to come, and that the emptiness I feel at this juncture is indicative of the happiness I have experienced over the last several years. And hopefully, when I walk through Fitzrandolph Gate again as an alumnus when I’m Milton Glaser’s age, I will have lived up to the convictions and ideals I have gained as a consequence of my education in this place.