Unlike the artists behind our favorite songs or favorite movies, we don't always know the faces behind the most iconic graphic designs. But that doesn't mean you aren't familiar with the work of these visual artists—you encounter the work of popular graphic designers every day on billboards, online, and on television. These artists work in marketing, branding, and advertising, designing logos, typography, and other visual elements to tell a distinctive story. Read on to learn about the most famous graphic designers in history.
- Paul Rand
- Paula Scher
- David Carson
- Stefan Sagmeister
- Milton Glaser
- Chip Kidd
- April Greiman
- Jessica Walsh
- Massimo Vignelli
- Saul Bass
- Jacqueline Casey
- Ivan Chermayeff
- Seymour Chwast
- Tibor Kalman
- Debbie Millman
- John Maeda
- Louise Fili
- Gail Anderson
- James Victoire
- George Lois
Paul Rand
Perhaps one of the most famous graphic designers is Paul Rand.
This American art director and designer is known for designing logos and visual elements for Ford, IBM, Westinghouse, NeXT Computer, Enron, and UPS.
In fact, Rand is particularly known to have influenced corporate logo design. Drawing from European influences like the Swiss style, he developed the American modernistic style.
During his later years, Rand dedicated his time to writing and educating others on design principles, passing on his accumulated wisdom to the next generation of designers.
Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.
Paul Rand
Paula Scher
Paula Scher is an American graphic designer and painter who is most famous for designing the Tiffany & Co. and CitiBank brand identities. She worked in the 80s and 90s as an art director and has been a partner at Pentagram since 1991. Scher has designed for a huge list of heavy-hitter brands including Coca-Cola, Bloomberg, the Walt Disney Company, and the Museum of Modern Art. Her art has been exhibited in museums across the globe. Scher has broken barriers for women in graphic design over the course of her career.
David Carson
David Carson's path into graphic design is far from traditional. Before bursting onto the design scene in the 1990s, Carson was a prominent surfer who was named 9th best surfer in the world. Carson began designing at magazines and eventually served in art director roles, including at Beach Culture and Ray Gun. His unique style featured chaotic typography mixed with patterns and photos. In 1995, Carson created his own firm David Carson Design, in which he created brand identities for companies like Coca-Cola, Nike, and Pepsi.
Stefan Sagmeister
Those highly tuned into the music industry may be familiar with the work of Stefan Sagmeister, owner of Sagmeister Inc. Austrian-American Sagmeister created designs for the album covers and music magazines, including The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, Jay-Z, and OK Go. After working at agencies like Leo Burnett and his own firm, Sagmeister began teaching graduate-level design at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Milton Glaser
We are all born with genius. It's like our fairy godmother. But what happens in life is that we stop listening to our inner voices, and we no longer have access to this extraordinary ability to create poetry.
Milton Glaser
Milton Glaser is perhaps one of the most famous graphic designers. Glaser co-founded the iconic Pushpin Studios in 1954 and New York Magazine in 1968. He later established Milton Glaser, Inc. in 1974. The Manhattan studio produced a wide range of design deliverables: print graphics, identity programs for corporate and institutional marketing purposes, and numerous products, exhibitions, interiors, and exteriors for restaurants, shopping malls, supermarkets, hotels, and other retail and commercial environments. Glaser also designed and illustrated more than 300 posters for clients across publishing, music, theater, film, institutional and civic enterprise, and commercial products and services. You're most likely to recognize Glaser's "I Heart New York" logo.
Chip Kidd
Up next on our list of famous graphic designers and their work is Chip Kidd. His area of expertise lies in book cover design. Kidd is also an author, graphic designer, editor, and musician. Working at Knopf since 1986, Kidd currently serves as the associate art director. He's also freelanced for Amazon, Doubleday, HarperCollins, and more, churning out 75 covers each year.
April Greiman
Another one of the popular graphic designers today is April Greiman. This self-proclaimed "thinker and transmedia artist-designer" owns the design studio Made in Space. Greiman's studio is unique in that she uses a wide array of mediums, including textile, communications, architecture, new media, and advanced digital technology. At her studio, she prioritizes challenging interdisciplinary boundaries and investigates the parallels and intersections between design and art.
Jessica Walsh
Jessica Walsh founded &Walsh in 2019, which is one of the 0.1% of creative agencies owned by women. Prior to this, Walsh co-founded an agency with Stefan Sagmeister, which operated between 2010 and 2019. The two met via email when Walsh was looking for advice on where to take her career. Sagmeister ended up offering her a job and later opened the agency with her. Walsh's career beginnings had her crossing paths with Paula Scher when she turned down a job at Apple to serve as an intern at Scher's Pentagram. Like many other modern graphic designers, Walsh also spent time working in the world of magazines.
Massimo Vignelli
Massimo Vignelli was an Italian-born, New York-based designer who is most known for his minimalist style. Vignelli initially came to the U.S. on a fellowship in the late 1950s after studying architecture in Italy. Eventually, he landed at Unimark, where he designed the New York City metro signage. Vignelli designed across various mediums, including interior design, environmental design, package design, graphic design, furniture design, and product design. After leaving Unimark, Vignelli and his wife Lella founded their own agency, Vignelli Associates.
Saul Bass
Designing in the film industry beginning in the 1940s, Saul Bass worked prominently in Hollywood with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese. Additionally, Bass designed many corporate logos for Geffen Records, Hanna-Barbera, and AT&T. He also designed the Warner Bros.' "Big W" logo.
Jacqueline Casey
Jacqueline Casey was an American graphic designer who created graphic art and posters. Casey was a proponent of practical modernism and worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1955 to 1989. You can see some of Casey's work on display at the MIT Museum, Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.
My work combines two cultures: The American interest in visual metaphor on the one hand, and the Swiss fascination with planning, fastidiousness, and control over technical execution on the other.
Jacqueline Casey
Ivan Chermayeff
Ivan Chermayeff was the co-founder of Chermayeff & Geismar. His most famous work includes logotypes for The Smithsonian Institution, New York Museum of Modern Art, and HarperCollins. Additionally, he designed many posters, book covers, sculptures, fine art, and exhibitions.
Seymour Chwast
Seymour Chwast is an American illustrator, graphic designer, and type designer. Throughout his career, Chwast was often referred to as the "left-handed designer." After earning a B.F.A. at Cooper Union in 1951, He went on to found Pushpin Studios with Milton Glaser.
Tibor Kalman
Known as the "bad boy of design," Tibor Kalman began his career in the early 1970s in New York City working at the bookstore that eventually became Barnes & Noble. As in-house creative director, Kalman was responsible for creating advertisements, the B&N bookplate trademark, shopping bags, and store signs. Alongside his wife Maira Kalman, Carol Bokuniewicz, and Liz Trovato, Kalman launched the popular design agency M & Co. In the 1990s, Kalman turned his attention to Colors, a multicultural magazine focused on global awareness.
Debbie Millman
Debbie Millman is a designer, writer, educator, and host of the Design Matters podcast. Millman penned several books, including How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits, and Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People. She co-founded the School of Visual Arts' first graduate program in branding.
John Maeda
Inspired by the work of Paul Rand, John Maeda first developed an interest in design at MIT. Now, he's the vice president of design and artificial intelligence at Microsoft. His career has spanned teaching, in-house design, and consultancy. You can see his art in the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Cartier Foundation, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Louise Fili
I was always fascinated with typography. I remember being four or five years old and carving letter forms into the wall above my bed, even though I didn't yet have the ability to form them into words.
Louise Fili, The Great Discontent
Louise Fili owns the award-winning graphic and digital design firm of the same name. The firm is best known for creating one-of-a-kind food packaging and has worked with Tate's Cookies and Sarabeth's.
Fili previously served as art director at Pantheon Books and is famous for being a connoisseur of Italian visual culture. She is also the author of several books in English and Italian.
Gail Anderson
A partner at Anderson Newton Design, Gail Anderson has just about done it all when it comes to design. From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, she worked at Rolling Stone magazine. Additionally, she designed at Vintage Books (Random House) and creative directed at SpotCo. Anderson is the author of several books, including The Typographic Universe. Anderson is among the most well-known Black graphic designers in the US.
James Victore
Part creative thought leader, part designer, James Victore is best known for his provocative design style and creativity lectures. His pathway to design began after he dropped out of two different colleges when he became an apprentice to Paul Bacon. He owns his own design studio, publishes books on creativity, and teaches others that their work is a gift.
George Lois
George Lois was a graphic designer in the Mad Men era. He first worked at several Madison Avenue agencies, including DDB. But he's most famous for designing 92 covers for Esquire magazine.
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