Thursday, March 10, 2011

Tibor Kalman (Luca De Michele)


Tibor Kalman was born inBudapest, Hungary in 1949 and emigrated to US with his family in 1956. From 1967-70 he studied journalism at New York University, where he worked on the university newspaper and joined the radical group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). From 1968 he worked for the one-store company that eventually became the Barnes & Noble bookshop empire, creating window displays, store designs, signs and advertisements.

In 1979 Kalman left to found hisown design firm, M&Co. Tibor also beame an influential product designer. His brand of humor was even rarer in industrial design than in graphics, and thefamous M&Co wristwatches and clock faces with randomly ordered numbers still sell all over the world. Then he became an influential filmmaker. After that, he became an influential conjurer of three-dimensional places as well.

And, finally, in the nineties, he became an editor, creating the quixotic, smart,photo-driven magazine Colors, for Benetton.Today the influence of M&Co is still strong, both as a result of its work and that of the many designers, like Stefan Sagmaister, who worked there and went on to start their own design studios in New York City.He died at the age of 45 in Puerto Rico.




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