Most Inspiring Graphic Designers

Paula Scher has been at the forefront of graphic design for four decades. She began her career as an art director in the 1970s and has been a principal at Pentagram's New York office since 1991. Paula has taught at the School of Visual Arts for over two decades and has held teaching positions at Cooper Union, Yale, and Tyler School of Art. She is a recipient of the National Design Award, AIGA Medal, Type Directors Club Medal, and is a member of the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame.

Lubalin was a brilliant, iconoclastic advertising art director—in the 1940s with Reiss Advertising and then for twenty years with Sudler and Hennessey. Recipient of medal after medal, award after award, and in 1962 named Art Director of the Year by the National Society of Art Directors, he has also been a publication designer of great originality and distinction. He designed startling Eros in the early 60s, intellectually and visually astringent Fact in the mid-60s, lush and luscious Avant Garde late in the same decade, and founded U & lc in 1973 and saw it flourish into the 80s.

Milton Glaser (b.1929) is among the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States. He has had the distinction of one-man-shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center. He was selected for the lifetime achievement award of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum (2004) and the Fulbright Association (2011), and in 2009 he was the first graphic designer to receive the National Medal of the Arts award. As a Fulbright scholar, Glaser studied with the painter, Giorgio Morandi in Bologna, and is an articulate spokesman for the ethical practice of design. He opened Milton Glaser, Inc. in 1974, and continues to produce a prolific amount of work in many fields of design to this day.

Stefan Sagmeister is no mere commercial gun for hire. Sure, he's created eye-catching graphics for clients including the Rolling Stones and Lou Reed, but he pours his heart and soul into every piece of work. His design work is at once timeless and of the moment, and his painstaking attention to the smallest details creates work that offers something new every time you look at it.

Rand was born to Jewish immigrants in New York City between the World Wars. He was artistically inclined and studied design at three different institutions, though he never cared much for them and always considered himself self-taught. Soon he was earning praise for his magazine covers which he designed for free. Then, onward to logo.

Legendary graphic designer Saul Bass is rightly remembered for his incredible skill and seemingly unending creativity, a man who cared deeply about making things beautiful, even if no one else did. His work exists as a testament to the idea that good design can exist even in the most monetarily concerned places. From the late 1940’s until the early 1990’s, he created more than a dozen campaigns for films, with an even higher number dedicated to title sequences. Bass' work was risky, his posters were largely stripped down affairs that focused and strengthened attention rather than overwhelmed and scattered it into a million pieces. Colors were few, but bold in their application. The text and imagery itself was often treated similarly to a logo or a symbol: strong, simple, memorable, metaphorical, and easily applied to any number of other graphic applications.

For Ruth Ansel, the answer is: more legendary work. In the 1970s, she was art director for The New York Times Magazine. In the 1980s, she was art director for House & Garden, Vanity Fair and Vogue. And those prestigious titles were only part of her creative output during those years. She also created film titles for Louis Malle’s cult film, My Dinner with Andre, and designed celebrated editions of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Beard’s The End of the Game.

John Henry Alvin was an American cinematic artist and painter who illustrated some of the world's most recognizable movie posters. Alvin created key art for over 135 films over the course of his career, beginning with the poster for Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles in 1974. The style of art in his posters became known as Alvinesque by friends and colleagues in the entertainment industry.

Israeli-born Noma Bar studied graphic design and typography at the Jerusalem Academy of Art& Design before moving to London in 2001. Describing his craft as visual communication, combining the skills of artist, illustrator and designer, Noma states he’s “after the maximum communication with minimum elements”. His two stunning and highly acclaimed books, The Many Faces of Noma Bar and Negative Space have become a must have for the design industry. He has exhibited worldwide, including solo shows in London, New York and Paris.

Marian Bantjes (born 1963) is a Canadian designer, artist, illustrator, typographer and writer. Bantjes started working in the field of visual communication in 1983 and worked as a book typesetter from 1984–1994. She became well known as a talented graphic designer from 1994–2003, when she was a partner and senior designer at Digitopolis in Vancouver, BC, Canada, where she created identity and communication designs for a wide range of corporate, education and arts organizations. She owned and ran the design firm, with a small staff.