Graphic designers mourn passing of NYT’s Louis Silverstein

Society for News Design | Imprint | The New York Times
In a 2004 essay (which SND republished Friday) Phil Ritzenberg wrote that former New York Times art director Louis Silverstein, who died Thursday, “helped pave the way for newspaper designers to be valued as participants in newspaper journalism, even at tradition-bound institutions, and to help silence the tedious debate about art people versus word people.” Charles Apple writes, “You’d be amazed at the list of things we accept today as standard features of print newspapers that Silverstein invented over his decades at the Times.” Among the many bits of journo-trivia in the Times’ obit is this fact: Silverstein dropped the period from Times’ nameplate in 1967, saving the newspaper $45 a year in ink.