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The school is the alma mater of Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Herb Lubalin, and Lou Dorfsman, giants of the design world who influenced the school as members of the adjunct faculty and the board of trustees. Another powerful force was Rudolph de Harak, a teacher and designer whose rational, systems-based design methodology contrasted with the eclectic populism practiced by Glaser and others.
Between these opposing forces stood a unique figure: George Sadek, a Czech emigre who mixed the traditions of concrete poetry, classical typography, and the European avant-garde. Sadek is neither a free-wheeling eclectic nor a doctrinaire rationalist; his design courses stressed verbal play over stylistic appropriation, approaching typography as a literary and conceptual medium. Many of Sadek's students carried his subtly deranged classicism--what Tom Kluepfel has called "lunacy over logic"--into their professional work, including Kluepfel, Stephen Doyle, Alexander Isley, Mike Mills, Charles Nix, and Emily Oberman. Sadek retired from The Cooper Union in 1993.
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The Italian Idea |