Milton Glaser's Advice to Young Artists | Big Think

Milton Glaser's Advice to Young Artists

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Legendary designer Milton Glaser has ten thousand hours worth of advice for aspiring artists.

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Milton Glaser:

Milton Glaser (b.1929) is among the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States. He has had the distinction of one-man-shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center. In 2004 he was selected for the lifetime achievement award of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. As a Fulbright scholar, Glaser studied with the painter, Giorgio Morandi in Bologna, and is an articulate spokesman for the ethical practice of design. He opened Milton Glaser, Inc. in 1974, and continues to produce work in many fields of design to this day.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What is your advice to young artists who want to make a name for themselves?

Milton Glaser: My general advice to the young—you have to work like hell. There's no issue about being a natural genius and then falling into opportunities that will support it. Nobody's interested in supporting genius. Malcolm Gladwell's recent book defined ten thousand hours as the amount of time anybody has to put in to attain mastery. I love the fact that he was able to quantify that, and I would quite agree that that is a good number before you begin to understand what it is you're doing.

So the first thing I would say is put in your ten thousand hours. And after that, simply don't get stuck in your own belief system. Continue to understand the issue is not about style or what's going on at the moment, but things can be deeper, more profound, and more influential. And you can't stop working. The only thing that matters is that you have to be engaged and consistent and you can't give up and you can't be lazy. And outside of that there's no guarantee, even with all of that, that you will necessarily succeed—but as they say, that's life.