The ‘I Heart NY’ Logo Was Appropriated To Court Amazon. Its Jewish Designer Is Not Pleased
Iconic among icons, the “I Heart New York” logo was designed by an artist by the name of Milton Glaser in 1976, apparently scribbled on the back of an envelope during a cab ride. Now the 89-year-old’s design has been appropriated to lure a new kind of lover to New York — Amazon.
An 81-page document, co-authored by the offices of New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, show that the city’s bid to become the second headquarters for the massive corporation went far beyond offering billions in tax benefits. The letter, which swoons that the city is “where the future comes to rehearse, where the best come to get better,” opens with a reconfiguring of Glaser’s iconic New York symbol, with an orange Amazon arrow in place of the classic heart.
Nobody asked Glazer. And nobody had to.
Glaser, whose design was inspired by Robert Indiana’s famous “love” sculpture, donated his time to the city’s tourism campaign, receiving a $2,000 honorarium, and now owns no rights to the image, which generates an estimated $30 million every year, including $1 million for the state of New York.
“In this particular case, the Amazon logo is not very harmonious with the rest of the logo,” the artist said in a statement.
The icon-maker, also known for designs he made for Bob Dylan as well as “Angels In America,” Glaser told the New York Times in 2016, “You can’t have this much development, and the consequential eviction of hundreds of thousands of people who will have no place to live. There’s some fundamental misjudgment about the balance between ordinary people and people who make enormous amounts of money.” The octogenarian grew up in a worker’s cooperative in the Bronx, the son of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants.
“The character of New York is so intrinsically Jewish,” he told the Times.
Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO