Milton Glaser, the creator of the iconic “I ♥ NY” logo and the highly criticized “Cooler and Warmer” campaign for the State of Rhode Island, died on Friday on his 91st birthday of a stroke.
While his New York claim to fame was the graphically catchy, and emoji-prescient, 1977 New York state tourism logo, his work in Rhode Island was a widely panned effort by the Raimondo administration to rebrand the state for tourism. The failed multi-million dollar campaign paid Glaser’s firm more than $400,000 for it’s work on the logo and slogan.
He first sketched the “I ♥ NY” design on the back of an envelope — with red crayon — during a taxi ride, the New York post noted.
Glaser only closed up shop on his Kips Bay offices — a 10,000 square-foot Beaux-Arts townhouse where he helped found New York Magazine — in April of last year.
