Culture: RIP Louis Silverstein, the guy who gave The New York Times its shine
- An unsung journalistic hero: Before Louis Silverstein, newspaper design was a trade, not a profession. With the many changes he made as art director of the Times in the 1960s and 1970s, he helped change that. White space? More ambitious typefaces? Larger fonts? Abstract illustrations? Those were all his doing. Many of the conventions that modern newspapers now take advantage of came (in part) from Silverstein’s work. It took a lot of pushing, but Silverstein sold editors on these ideas. As a result, the Gray Lady is (and many other papers are) a lot less gray. And graphic design and news aren’t separate entities. Silverstein died Thursday at 92. (Also worth a read:The Society for News Design has a lot of anecdotes about an important figure in visual journalism.) source