Herb Lubalin

One of the great graphic designers of the 20th century, Herb Lubalin is perhaps best known for designing the iconic and highly recognizable font,ITC avant Gothic.  This font was soon widely used, but Lubalin complained that it was overused and abused.
Lubalin is also said to have gained the reputation as a “dirty young man” in high school with his nude drawings of Tarzan and Jane. This theme would resurface later in his career though Eros, a magazine that he helped to design. Eros was eventually shut down after the US Postal Service brought an obscenity case against it.
I’m a big fan of nearly all fonts designed by Lubalin, includingITC serif gothic, ITC ronda, and ITC Lublain graph.
There are 11 pages of Lubalin’s work spanning all the way from his logos and branding up to his more conceptual art and photography. It’s a rather thorough collection and a good starting point if you’re looking for inspiration from one of the original masters of our medium.

On a side note, Gabor’s tribute prompted me to brush up on my Herb Lubalin Trivia by going over his Wikipedia entry. I was shocked to find that he passed away at age 63. Maybe seeing another of my design heroes, Wim Crouwel,in Helvetica film gave me an unrealistic ideal of longevity, but I always thought of design as the sort of trade you could still be plugging away at and actually producing relevant work well into your 60′s and 70′s (desire permitting, of course). It’s a shame he passed so soon and it’s incredible what he was able to achieve in the relatively short time he had. I wonder what his thoughts on the digital revolution would have been? And perhaps more importantly, how would he have viewed the resurgence and near ubiquity of his famous typeface (Avant Garde) in the past decade of graphic design?