By its sheer ubiquity, I ❤️ NY may be the world's most appropriated logo. Some 50 years after it was first introduced, New York state's official brandmark has become an all-purpose shorthand for allegiance and affection for anything, anywhere.
Milton Glaser and the I ❤️ NY logo
Curiously, I ❤️ NY was born during a time when there was little to love about New York City. Designed by Milton Glaser in the mid-1970s, the logo originally served as the graphic punchline to an advertising campaign that helped rescue the city from the brink of bankruptcy. Desperate to arrest its ballooning fiscal deficit, city officials funded a campaign that could lure tourists back to the Big Apple. Wells, Rich, Greene, helmed by the trailblazing ad executive Mary Wells Lawrence, produced it; songwriter Steve Karmen wrote an earworm of a jingle, and Glaser was asked to create a logo.
Glaser's concept sketch for the 'I ❤️ NY' logo is now in MoMA's permanent collection
Working pro bono without a contract, Glaser quickly sketched a mark consisting of the tagline spelled out in all caps and divided between two black lozenge shapes. The city accepted it without changes. But a few days later he had another thought.
Doodling on the cab ride from his home to the office, as he often did, Glaser drew a red heart paired with the letters 'I' and 'NY' rendered in a friendly font. He chose American Typewriter – a slab serif with a certain 1970s flair – and worked with longtime studio assistant George Leavitt to slightly tweak it. Decades before the proliferation of emoji, some worried that the rebus-like construction would confuse people. Nevertheless, New York City adopted Glaser's second proposal, and soon made it the official tourism logo for the entire state.
Copycats emerged almost immediately. What makes I ❤️ NY remarkable is its portability. In Glaser's personal files one can find knick-knacks bearing variations of his logo – I ❤️ Macedonia, I ❤️ Ngorongoro, I ❤️ Rhodes – sent by friends and fans. Fashion brands like Chanel, Coach, Kate Spade, and Raf Simons have produced collections around the logo, while bootleg trinkets emblazoned with variations on I ❤️ NY abound. The state ultimately secured a copyright in the mid-1990s and earns tens of thousands of dollars in licensing fees each year.
A heavy legacy
Milton Glaser in his Manhattan studio in 2014
Over the decades, every article about Glaser tended to circle back to I ❤️ NY. Its widespread popularity became his calling card and also a kind of creative prison. 'It's something I wish people would forget,' he said in a 2016 New York Times profile. 'I've done other things.'
Indeed, the 2009 National Medal of Arts honoree had achieved many other things, including co-founding New York magazine, designing beautiful restaurants, and producing hundreds of beloved posters, album covers and book jackets. Glaser’s abecedarium of logos includes marks for Brooklyn Brewery, DC Comics, and Italian gelato maker Sammontana. Yet nothing quite matched the universal impact of I ❤️ NY – perhaps only his iconic 1966 Bob Dylan poster counts as a distant second.
Glaser, who passed away on his birthday in 2020, never lost sight of the logo's original purpose as a civic symbol. I ❤️ NY, at its core, is a cri de coeur for resilience. In the aftermath of 9/11, Glaser appended it with the words 'More Than Ever', added a burn mark where the Twin Towers once stood, and gave the grieving city a ready-made banner. The same poster re-emerged in shop windows and food carts during the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2023, New York City felt compelled to modernise Glaser's logo. The woeful ‘We ❤ NYC’ rebrand was swiftly dismissed as a flop. The flood of complaints about it confirmed one thing: ferocious affection for Glaser's original. In an era when brand loyalty is elusive, the logo conceived half a century ago remains, somehow, irreplaceable.
This article appears in Wallpaper’s August 2026 Creative America issue, available from 4 July, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today