12 Names Every Graphic Designer Should Know

In the hands of famous graphic designers, the industry has grown and changed to an extreme degree. It is a well-known fact that all graphic designers have to learn from those who came before them to advance in the field of design. The designers included in this article changed the way graphic design is seen in the contemporary world. They are the thinkers who have made a difference to design.

1. Chip Kidd

Chip Kidd is a NYC-based graphic designer known for his stunning book jackets. He worked for writers such as Michael Crichton, Neil Gaiman and James Elroy. Jurassic Park is one of this most recognizable book covers. "Not only was the drawing integrated into the movie poster, it became the logo in the film for the park itself. I think it's safe to say that the Jurassic Park T-Rex became one of the most recognizable logos of the 1990s."

2. Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister is an innovative designer and art director at Sagmeister & Walsch in NYC. He collaborated with The Talking Heads, The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, Time Warner, and the Guggenheim Museum. He received three Grammys for his packaging and album cover artwork. Austria-born Sagmeister has long been known for his work in the music industry, and he rose to prominence in the early 90s.

3. Rob Janoff

The first thing you need to know about Rob Janoff is that he designed the Apple logo. Janoff crafted probably the most famous mark in the world today while working at an advertisement agency Regis McKenna. Although it has been modified, the basic form has remained the same to this very day. Rob Janoff also did design work for both IBM and Intel.

4. Armin Hofmann

Armin Hofmann is a legend of Swiss graphic design, who has influenced generations of designers. He began his career in 1947 as a teacher at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel School of Art and Craft. His teaching methods were unorthodox, setting new standards that became widely known in design education institutions all around the world. He is well-known for his posters, which accentuated economical use of color and fonts, in reaction to what Hofmann regarded as the "trivialization of color."

5. Massimo Vignelli

"If you can design one thing, you can design everything," was the ethos of the late Italian designer, Massimo Vignelli. This design virtuoso crafted some of the most iconic design work in the past 50 years, including New York City subway map and American Airlines logo. He worked in a number of areas ranging from package design through houseware/furniture design to public signage and showroom design.

6. Otl Aicher

Born in 1922, Otl Aicher was an eminent German graphic designer and typographer. He is best known for his work for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. He also created a design logo for German airline Lufthansa, which came out in 1969. Aicher created a visual identity where he used pictograms, a bright palette and a strict grid system.

7. Michael Beirut

Born in 1957, Michael Beirut is a graphic designer, design critic and educator. He has done projects with United Airlines, Saks Fifth Avenue, Yale School of Architecture, Benetton and many more. He has written three books, and the most popular one is How to… published in 2015.

8. David Carson

David Carson became the most influential graphic designer of the 1990s, during his position as an art director of music and lifestyle magazine Ray Gun. His atypical grunge typography style was a new era in design. The first edition of his "End of Print" monograph was published in 2000, and sold in numerous copies. Era active: 1980s through present

9. Paula Scher

The most famous female graphic designer in the world, Paula Scher is equally appreciated for her individual work as she is for her revolutionary overhauling of theatre promotion standards. Scher gave a fresh identity to various institutions such as the Metropolitan Opera, The Public Theater, the New York City Ballet, and the New York Shakespeare Festival.

10. Alan Fletcher

Also known as the father of British graphic design, Alan Fletcher changed the way design was perceived via expressive typography, strong visual language and bold colors. Some of his most prominent clients were Pirelli, Penguin Books, Cunard and Olivetti. Era active: 1960s – 1990s

11. Saul Bass

Saul Bass is a graphic design genius, best known for this design of film posters, corporate logos and title sequences. During his long career, Bass worked for some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese and Otto Preminger. His remarkable 1950s movie posters and motion picture title sequences include Psycho, North by Northwest, Spartacus and The Man with the Golden Arm and others.

12. April Greiman

We could not finish this list, without adding another lady, who established herself as a pioneer of digital communications design. During the 1980s, April Greiman was among a few visionaries who recognized the potential of integrating the computer into design practice. Her innovative ideas and transmedia projects made her work influential worldwide over the last 30 years.