Drawing Is Thinking

Introduction by Judith Thurman, an interview with Milton Glaser, and 180 textless pages of drawings by Glaser. The book invites a close reading of the illustrations to discern Glaser's intention. "22 pages of text explaining why there is no text, 180 pages of inventive drawings that invite the viewer to juxtapose the relationship." From the book jacket: For more than fifty years, Milton Glaser has designed much of the world we live and experience every day. His posters, books, albums, restaurants, advertisements, and so much more have identified him as the preeminent force in design in America. Now, in Drawing is Thinking, Glaser draws upon an amazing vocabulary of images and techniques to create his most personal book to date. In a way, he has not only been drawing all his life, he has been thinking about art and design on that journey. Based on his view that all art has its origin in the impulse to create, he has designed a book that powerfully delineates this position. In Drawing is Thinking, the drawings depicted are meant to be experienced sequentially, so that the viewer not only follows Glaser through these pages, but comes to inhabit his mind. The drawings represent a sweeping range of subject matter taken from the full range of a reflective master's career. The pages suggest that drawing is not simply a way to represent reality, but, as the title implies, a better way to perceive the world. The maker and the viewer become more attentive, one by creating the work, the other by experiencing it. Glaser's two signature books, Graphic Design and Art is Work, are each in print decades after their first appearances. In different ways, each is a display of his work with extended descriptions of how the work came about, and how design problems were visually resolved. But in Drawing is Thinking the author is less interested in display. Glaser this time is concerned with how the mind works in its attempt to create reality.