20 Graphic Designers You Should Know

Image via Complex Original

The idea seems simple enough, putting text and images on a page or screen in an aesthetically pleasing and informative way. But, in comparison to other areas of design, Graphic Design is a fairly new profession, one that only gained real professional status in the 1950s and 60s. There are many styles of graphic design, and with it schools of thought on how to best display and convey information. In our list we tried to give you a cross section of these different styles and the various pioneers of this profession. These are the men and women of graphic design, past and present, whom we think you should know. 

Think of this as a jumping off point for any of you wanting to know more about a sometimes misunderstood field.

Eddie Opara

Born in London in 1972, Eddie Opara studied graphic design at the London College of Printing and Yale University. He worked at ATG, Imaginary Forces and 2x4 before founding his own firm, The Map Office in 2005. Opara has created work for the Studio Museum in Harlem, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Queens Museum of Art, JWT, Prada, Vitra, the Corcoran Group, Morgan Stanley, New York University, UCLA, and Princeton Architectural Press, among others. In 2010 Opara joined Pentagram’s New York office, bringing his designers from The Map Office with him. At Pentagram, Opara has continued to bring his impressive mix of interactive, print and web skills to projects for The Museum Tower, CFDA, Oprah Winfrey, The Andy Warhol Foundation and SCAD Museum of Art. [Pentagram]

Stefan Sagmeister

Born in Austria, Sagmeister moved to NYC in 1987 to attend Pratt on a Fulbright scholarship. His work mixes sexuality with humor and always tries to push the envelop of indecency. Sagmeister’s most notable work is a poster he designed for AIGA in 1999. The designer employed one of his assistants to carve the text of the event into his skin using an x-acto knife, he then photographed the end result. [Design Museum]

Chip Kidd

Chip Kidd is a writer and designer working in New York City. He primarily designs book jackets, working for Alfred A. Knopf since 1986. Kidd also designs for Pantheon, a subsidiary of Knopf, as an editor of books of comics. In 1997, Kidd received the International Center of Photography’s award for “Use of Photography in Graphic Design” and in 1998, he was made a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale [AIGA]

Paula Scher

In the 1970s and 80s Paula Scher begun her career as Art Director for CBS records, where she designed posters, ads and over 150 album covers a year. In 1991 Scher joined Pentagram as Partner, developing identities, packaging and signage for a variety of major clients including The New York Times Magazine, Bloomberg, Target, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Madison Square Park, Tiffany & Co., Citibank and The Public Theater. In 1998 she was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame and in 2000 she won the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. [AIGA]

Michael Bierut

Despite Michael Bierut’s iconic status and his over 30 years of success, he is still the humble, gracious, mid-westerner who began studying design at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. Bierut’s pedigree starts early, with his first internship with AIGA medalist Chris Pullman. After school, Bierut landed his first job, and an enviable one at that, at the prestigious Vignelli Associates design firm, where he would eventually become VP of Design. He worked on clients such as Benetton and United Airlines.

After 10 years at Vigenlli, Bieurt moved on to another world-wide industry giant, Pentagram. Bierut doesn’t just create eye-catching work (Including clients like Saks Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Yale School of Architecture, Princeton University, Guitar Hero, The New York Jets), but he is also an advocate for design: writing books on design, as a co-founder of Design Observer and as a teacher/lecturer all over the world. Bierut’s down to earth take on design and its place in our lives is what continues to make him accessible and his work fresh and on-point. [AIGA]

David Carson

The original “grunge” designer, David Carson is most widely known for his anti-swiss (read: hap-hazard) style, placing type and images anywhere on the page – over pictures, over itself, even up-side-down. His work is certainly reactionary to the modernist ethos, but his magazines, specifically Ray Gun, have become iconic and are still praised for their originally. [David Carson]

Jacqueline Casey

Jacqueline Casey did more in her position as a designer at MIT than most people do in a lifetime. She began working at MIT in 1955, brought on board through the suggestion of her friend and former classmate Muriel Cooper, and remained at the Institute until her death in 1992. Casey helped pioneer the institute’s Office of Design Services and acted as director for the office from 1972 until 1989. Her posters for MIT are iconic; they’re elegant and energetic, clean and creative. Casey had a real talent for depicting concepts through simple forms and type. Her posters are still an inspiration to designers. [MIT]

Ruth Ansel

Even though Ruth Ansel worked as Art Director for the New York Times Magazine in the 1970s and Art Director for House and Garden, Vanity Fair and Vogue in the 1980s, those prestigious titles were only part of her creative output during her career. Ansel also created film titles for numerous books and directed fashion ad campaigns for Versace, Club Monaco and Karl Lagerfield. [Ruth Ansel]

Massimo Vignelli

“If you can design one thing, you can design everything.”

Massimo Vignelli lives by his famous mantra. He is a packaging designer, a furniture designer, a graphic designer and so much more. Vignelli has designed the identity for American Airlines, and signage for the NYC Subway System and the DC Metro system. In 1971 Vignelli opened Vignelli Associates with his with and partner, Lella. Together they crated work for companies like Knoll, Benetton, Heller, IBM, Bloomingdales, Xerox, and the Guggenheim among others. [AIGA]

Herbert Matter

A Swiss native, Herbert Matter moved to Paris to pursue his academic goals. He assisted A.M. Cassandre and Le Corbusier (who some of you may know from our 25 Furniture Designers You Should Know article) It was in this roll he crafted his intense, yet precise style. In 1932 Matter was expelled from France for having improper papers and returned to Switzerland, taking up work as a poster designer for the Swiss Tourist Office where he created some of his most notable work. Matter travelled to the U.S. by exchanging his work for passage with a Swiss ballet troupe. After the tour ended Matter stayed in NYC, pursuing a career with Alexey Brodovitch (who happened to be a fan of Matter’s travel posters). Matter designed for the Container Corporation of America and Knoll, and later went on to teach at Yale. He also experienced a successful career a photographer, shooting for Harper's Bazaar and Saks Fifth Avenue. [Herbert Matter]

Alvin Lustig

Alvin Lustig contributions to book design, magazines, interiors and textiles have had a long-term influence on contemporary design practice. A Denver native Lustig’s family moved to LA when he was just a boy, it was here he met “an enlightened teacher” who introduced him to Modern art, sculpture, and French poster design. He started off as a printer and typographer, and after a few years focused solely on design, designing books for New Directions. In 1944 he moved to NYC top further pursue his career. Here he worked for Look Magazine until 1946. Lustig was a true Modernist designer. He was a kin to the Bauhaus school of thought, that designers should pursue a holistic approach to their work and design every aspect of a project, and applied it to every aspect of his career. [Alvin Lustig]

Lillian Bassman

Lilliam Bassman was a contemporary of Cipe Pineles, working as a protégé of Alexey Brodocitch while at Harper’s Bazaar. When the magazine launched their young girls magazine, Junior Bazaar, Bassman was appointed Art Director in conjunction with v – at his request. In addition to her talents as a designer, Bassman also had a successful photography career, being sought after for her commercial portraits of models in lingerie, cosmetics and fabric. [NYT]

Cipe Pineles

Cipe Pineles began her designer career assisting M.F. Agha at Vogue (a direct rival of Alexey Brodovitch) and Vanity Fair. After years of preparing and learning from a master, Pineles finally rose to the position Agha was preparing her for, Art Director of Glamour magazine. She worked hard to develop the magazine – employing the best talent of the day including another creative on our list, Herbert Matter, despite her publisher's lack of support for the magazine. After Glamour, Pineles took over the reigns at Seventeen, finding founder and editor Helen Valentines’s mission to educate teen girls a kin to her own, she pushed the magazine to greatness by utilizing the best artists available to them. Pineles’s drive and motivation were not overlooked in her make-run world of design, she was the first woman to be asked to join the Art Director’s Club and was later inducted to their Hall of Fame. [AIGA]

Milton Glaser

There’s no doubt that you’ve seen Milton Glaser’s work. He founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker and created the I <3 NY logo that every tourist annoyingly proudly wears. Born in 1929, Glaser attended the Cooper Union and was a Fulbright scholar, traveling to the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy to study. In 1954 he co-founded Push-Pin Studios with Reynold Ruffins, Seymore Chawst and Edward Sorel, In 1963 Glaser and Felker founded New York Magazine and in 1983 he and Walter Bernard formed WBMG; a publication design firm with clientele like LA Times, Boston Globe, Time, AdWeek and Brill’s Content. [Milton Glaser]

Bradbury Thompson

A native of Topeka, Kansas, Bradbury Thompson left the Great Plains for the big city life of NYC, as you do when you're a creative. He worked for 60 years in NYC, for companies like Rogers, Kellog and Stillson, the magazine Mademoiselle and the West and Co. Paper Corporation and also taught at Yale. Thompson's work is distinguished by his talent for color, composition and understanding of the power of letter forms. His close relationship with the printing process is evident by his use of color overlays, which gives his work a refreshing energy. [RIT]

Alexey Brodovitch

Born in Russia in 1898, Alexey Brodovitch moved to the United States in 1930. In 1934 he began working for Harper's Bazaar, under the inspiring editor, Carmel Snow. He spent nearly 25 years at the woman’s fashion magazine, ultimately influencing the profession for future generations. Brodovitch’s work at Harper's Bazaar was more in-depth and all encompassing than what previous art director’s had done; He not only arranged photos, illustrations and text on the page, but he conceived and commissioned all graphic art - including helping start the careers of photographers Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. His role at the magazine is now the model that contemporary profession of Art Direction is based on. [AIGA]

George Lois

George Lois is a prolific advertiser and Art Director. You’ll recognize his work for MTV, remember a little “I want my MTV” campaign? He also helped create VH1, Lean Cuisine and launch Tommy Hilfiger. Lois’s work also includes campaigns for Jiffy Lube, USA Today and ESPN. But, his art direction for Esquire magazine, where he oversaw numerous covers, is probably his best-known work. [George Lois]

Herb Lubalin

Herb Lubalin is arguably the grandfather of typography (although he disputed this classification, opting for the term "typographics" – creating graphics through the use of type). Lubalin worked as an Art Director for most of his career (designing for Eros, Fact, Avant Guarde and U&Lc) he was named Art Director of the Year in 1962 by the National Society of Art Directors. But, despite this, Lubalin's typography has always been the crowning glory of his portfolio – influencing the way people saw letter forms and words, by adding movement and transforming text into pictures and meaningful messages. [AIGA]

Saul Bass

A native New Yorker, Saul Bass moved to LA in his mid-twenties to pursue a career in Graphic Design. Bass is a jack of all design traits, dabbling in both print design and movie animation. You may be familiar with Bass’s work if you’ve ever flown United or Continental, supported United Way or the Girl Scouts, or have seen the title sequences for Psycho, Anatomy of a Murder, Spartacus or The Man with the Golden Arm, a trend Bass spearheaded. [AIGA]

Paul Rand

Born in Brooklyn in 1914, Rand attended art school in New York City at both Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. Despite this formal training Rand found these institutes not stimulating and ultimately taught himself design, studying the works of A.M. Cassandre and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy through European magazines. Although, Rand began his career designing covers for Direction magazine, his most notable contributions to the field of Graphic Design have been his corporate work for companies like IBM, ABC, UPS and Westinghouse. [Paul Rand]