Milton Glaser Designs Promotional Ads for the Final Season of "Mad Men"

Capturing the "spirit of the '60s."

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

Graphic designer Milton Glaser has been recruited to help promote the seventh and final season of AMC's Mad Men as only he could. In keeping with the era of the show, Glaser was chosen because of his influence in the field of graphic design during the '60s. According to the New York Times, the final design seen above was modeled after his 1966 poster for Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits LP. That now iconic poster was initially modeled after Marcel Duchamp's 1957 self-portrait.


Dylan poster (above left) via MoMA
Duchamp via MetMuseum 

Glaser's Mad Men poster features the same psychedelic quality as Dylan's hair in the '66 poster. Fast Co Design spoke with the designer, and he revealed that while it was Matthew Weiner (the show's creator and executive producer) and the Mad Men team who wanted the new poster to resemble Dylan's, it had already been established that one of his previous would serve as inspiration: "This was all pre-ordained. We knew we were deliberately replicating something that had already been done, a spirit of another moment in time: the spirit of the '60s." He also talked a little about how the final design came to life. "Originally I think the client wanted an abstraction, which was to say non-identifiable things. They didn’t want a narrative to it, but when I started, the general narrative came to me--a narrative to many things in life, I suppose--of a woman, drinking, wine, and if you look there’s a floating shoe coming off the right hand side. The narrative is simple-minded for the time, but the producer said they in fact reflect what’s coming up in the show."

Click through to Fast Co Design to read more of the interview with Glaser and share your thoughts on the new poster below.

RELATED: Interview: Five Questions With Legendary Designer Milton Glaser at the MoMA Design Store 

[via FastCoDesign]

Latest in Style