Herb Lubalin Study Center
I love it when a bucket-list travel item lives up to the long-held ideal in my mind… nothing is truer for me in recent years than my visit to the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design & Typography at the Cooper Union. During a recent trip to New York for the release of my new book ‘All the Colours of New York’ I was able to snag a last-minute appointment to the Herb Lubalin Center; an enormous collection of design resources — 100s of 1000s of design and typography pieces, books and ephemera — tucked away in the basement of The Cooper Union building.
Most of the pieces are arranged by designer or by era/category, stored in pull-out flat-file drawers, and each design specimen is housed in individual plastic sleeves. It was the most wonderfully mind-boggling 2 hours spent trawling through work from Paul Rand, Milton Glaser, Massimo Vignelli, Elaine Lustig Cohen, Herb Lubalin, The Push Pin Studios, and even a tiny little almanac from my beloved Charley Harper.
This was absolutely the best (not-so) tourist visit I’ve ever had to NYC. My mind is still buzzing from all the incredible things I saw, it was such an inspiring experience! If you’re interested in design and would like to visit yourself, the Herb Lubalin Center is open to the public by appointment.
