Oscar Wilde once wrote, “It is through art and through art only, that we can realize our perfection.” Reba Sochis is the personification of Wilde’s statement. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Reba Sochis grew up expecting to follow in her sister’s footsteps: go to university and study to become a teachercertainly the proper profession for a…

The role of an industrial designer is a difficult one. Through his knowledge of applied art, he must create a manufactured article that will appeal aesthetically to the consumer and result in its purchase. Sales interest, stylistic trends and various other considerations are usually employed to determine how a product should look. One of the…

Raymond Rubicam (June 16, 1892 – May 8, 1978) was an American advertising pioneer who co-established the Young & Rubicam (Y&R) advertising agency with John Orr Young. He retired from Y&R in 1944 at age 52. Raymond Rubicam’s innovative leadership and creativity led many to recognize him as “advertising’s statesman.” Because his creative concepts and…

Bernice Alexandra “Ray” Eameswas born on December 15, 1912 in Sacramento, California. She graduated from Sacramento High School in 1931 and, two years later, from New Yorks May Friend Bennett School, where she pursued her interest in fashion design. Thereafter, for a period of six years, Ray studied with Hans Hofmann, the abstract expressionist. In…

In a day and age when good enough passes for great, and passable is more than sufficient, Ralph Ammirati has based his career on a very simple philosophy; no second class anything, any time, any place. How he maintains this quality is really quite simple. No detail escapes him. Even though he has enough laurels…

One assumes that when R.O. Blechman came into the world in 1930, he came quietly. It is difficult to imagine him being loud or obstreperous even in the trauma of birth. His speaking voice never quite reaches that of a stage whisper, but it fits perfectly his persona of determined understatement. And his drawings reflect…

R. Roger Remington has spent his formative and adult life in upstate New York (the Adirondacks and Rochester). His professional education in graphic design was in nonestablishment settings, having studied at Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He considers himself primarily a teacher who has critical interests in design studies (graphic design…

Prolific designer of more than 80 typefaces. Robert Hunter Middleton (May 6, 1898 – August 3, 1985) was an American book designer, painter, and type designer. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he came to Chicago at the age of ten in 1908 where he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He joined…

Phyllis Kenner Robinson (née Kenner, October 22, 1921 – December 31, 2010) was an advertising executive and copywriter who helped create numerous notable ad campaigns. She was a foundation employee of the US agency Doyle Dane Bernbach from 1949 and was instrumental in that agency’s success and growth over the next twenty years. Born in…

If one word could describe Philip Harrison Hays, it would be glamour, the old Hollywood kind. He had looks, style, and ambition, and he came of age near the end of an era when illustration still dominated advertising and publishing, and when great illustrators were stars. Born in Sherman, Texas on May 14, 1930, Phil…