The incredible career of influential and legendary designer Seymour Chwast (b. 1931) spans over six decades. He is a founding partner of the groundbreaking Push Pin Studios, established in 1954 by a group of college friends from Cooper Union in New York City. This group of highly talented designers and illustrators introduced a new, collaborative style to the design world, redefining visual culture and influencing artists for generations to come. Chwast moved into a Director role at the storied organization, later renaming it the Pushpin Group in 1985. His vast client list includes the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, and Print, as well as leading corporations, advertising agencies, and publishers both in the United States and abroad. His work has been showcased all over the world in both retrospectives and one-man shows, including the exhibit “The Push Pin Style,” a two-month retrospective at the Louvre’s famed Musée des Arts Décoratifs. His posters reside in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the Gutenberg Museum. In 2015, Washington University’s Modern Graphic History Library in St.Louis acquired Chwast’s complete archive including posters, which will soon be available for study by students and the general public.
Image credit:
Seymour Chwast
Nicholas Nickleby
Masterpiece Theater series, PBS
1984