Louis Silverstein (October 10, 1919 – December 1, 2011) was an American artist and

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...

who is best known for his work at ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. He was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame in 1984.

Biography

Silverstein was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York. He attended

Boys High School Single-sex education, also known as single-gender education and gender-isolated education, is the practice of conducting education with male and female students attending separate classes, perhaps in separate buildings or schools. The practice of ...

and graduated from the

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...

with a degree in fine arts. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Silverstein served in the

Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

, doing graphic design. After the war, he attended the

Chicago Institute of Design Institute of Design (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech), founded as the New Bauhaus, is a graduate school teaching systemic, human-centered design. History The Institute of Design at Illinois Tech is a school of design ...

, where he was exposed to avant-garde design. Silverstein worked for a variety of employers, including labor unions and an

advertising agency An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...

. He was art director for '' Amerika'', a Russian magazine prepared by the U.S. State Department for distribution in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. In 1952, Silverstein joined the promotions department at ''The New York Times''. He helped make the newspaper more readable in 1967, when he enlarged the

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...

. In 1976, he changed the format of the front page from eight

columns A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

to six. Also that year, he helped introduce the new weekday sections of the newspaper ("SportsMonday", "Science Times", "Living", "Home", and "Weekend"). Silverstein was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame in 1984. At the time,

Massimo Vignelli Massimo Vignelli (; January 10, 1931 – May 27, 2014) was an Italian designer who worked in a number of areas including packaging, houseware, furniture, public signage, and showroom design. He was the co-founder of Vignelli Associates, with his ...

said, "We are affected by all the factors in the environment around us, and nothing is more ubiquitous than the newspaper. By changing the ''Times'' and influencing so many newspapers in other cities, we are indebted to him for improving the quality of our lives." After his 1985 retirement, Silverstein continued to consult to ''The New York Times'' and other newspapers. He was responsible for the new look of 35 regional newspapers as well as papers in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

, and Spain.

Bibliography

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Silverstein, Louis 1919 births 2011 deaths American graphic designers Pratt Institute alumni The New York Times people Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni