Milan, Italy

Internationally-known graphic designer Bob Noorda, who helped introduce a Modernist look to advertising and corporate logos in the 1960s (as well as the entire New York City subway system) died on January 11 at the age of 82 due to complications of head trauma suffered in a fall. For his contributions to the city of Milan, he has been given a sepulcher in the city’s historic cemetery, the Famedio del Cimitero Monumentale, where some of Milan’s most famous citizens are buried.

A master of spare, elegant, and logical designs that “caught the eye,” Dutch-born Noorda helped found Unimark International in 1965, teaming up with a group of American and European designers (including Massimo Vignelli), with initial offices in Chicago and Milan. An early proponent of unified branding—the consistent use of distinctive type and imagery to identify a company—Unimark has been credited with awakening the corporate world to Modernist design thinking.

The influence of Bob Noorda carries on…

Read the full Obit by Steven Heller in The New York Times, here.

(thanks for the link, Ronald)