Herb Lubalin

In his distinguished career as art director, typographer, designer, and headline writer, the late Herb Lubalin epitomized the philosophy of the One Club.

Herb the art director wrote his own headlines. Copy and layout functioned successfully in tandem to sell a product. To Herb, words had a two-fold destiny resulting in a single impact. Herb the artist listened to words, and painstakingly designed its letters typographically, wielding a razor blade to eliminate hairline space between letters to his satisfaction. Each character related to the whole, and the meaning of the word was emphasized in his choice of typeface.

Herb the writer took his tightly designed words a step further. His designer self was responsible for their position on the page in relation to art, to white space, to message impact.

 
Often, while client discussions raged about him – characteristically silently, seemingly effortlessly, certainly profusely – Herb worked at his extra-large-size tracing paper pad. When the meeting ended, before clients, copywriters, marketing experts and account executives dispersed, the client was about to choose an ad and headline from Herb’s many visuals.

Herb was typographer, designer, art director, copywriter – a one-show professional who, even under the pressure of time, never manifested anything but cool. Cool and genius.