Designer
Herb Lubalin logged nearly two decades at the ad agency Sudler & Hennessey before opening his own studio in 1964, and spent the rest of his career insisting that type should act out a word rather than simply deliver it. He jammed letters until they touched, fused them into ligatures, and tucked "& Child" inside the O of Mother, so the shape of a word became part of its argument. His partnership with publisher Ralph Ginzburg on Eros, Fact, and Avant Garde paired that typography with genuine provocation: Eros got Ginzburg convicted of obscenity, Fact lost a libel suit to Barry Goldwater, and all three looked better than anything else on the newsstand. The Avant Garde masthead, expanded with Tom Carnase into ITC Avant Garde Gothic, spread so far it spent decades being misused, and as a co-founder of the International Typeface Corporation and editor of its magazine U&lc, Lubalin evangelized expressive type as hard as he invented it. Every designer who treats a letter as an image rather than a vessel is working in a room he built.
Learn More →Signature Traits
Major Works
Avant Garde magazine (1968–1971)
The most visually adventurous magazine in American history. Every issue a typographic event.
ITC Avant Garde Gothic (1970)
The typeface derived from the magazine's logo. Still everywhere, still electrifying when used correctly.
Mother & Child logotype
Two words. Perfectly letterspaced. The infant tucked inside the ampersand. Still the most elegant piece of visual wordplay ever made.
Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer (Monograph)
Adrian Shaughnessy's survey of a career built almost entirely on letterforms, tracing the path from Avant Garde magazine through decades of typographic experiments most designers only encounter in fragments.
