Charlie with my daughter Stephanie Bridget, 1991

Influences

This Saturday May 16th will mark the second anniversary of Charles Goslin’s death. He is arguably one of the most influential professors at Pratt Institute and an inspiration to countless graphic designers, illustrators and ad men and women. His art was simple and resolute and he rarely used a superfluous word or image. He simply created timeless, elegant and sophisticated graphic imagery.

In a time when newspapers squeeze ads on their front pages and while I am treated to a daily diet of pop-up ads and bad design smothered in drop shadows, squiggly lines and incongruous images he was poignantly refreshing. It was very simple with Charlie; a paint stroke equates to art, an hourglass suggests time, a heart indicates love. He created simple solutions that a four-year-old boy or eighty-year-old woman could decipher. I miss the simplicity of it all and I miss Charles Goslin.