Tibor George Kalman (; July 6, 1949 – May 2, 1999)
Early life
Tibor George Kalman was born on July 6, 1949, in Budapest, to parents Marianne I. (née Deezsoffy or Dezsőffi) and George Tibor Kalman. He became a United States resident at the age of seven in 1956, after he and his family fled Hungary to escape the Soviet invasion, settling in Poughkeepsie, New York. Kalman attended Our Lady of Lourdes High School. Both of his parents had Jewish ethnic roots and converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution, so "Kalman only became aware that he was Jewish at the age of 18".
In 1967, he enrolled in New York University (NYU) to study journalism and history. While at NYU, he wrote for a student newspaper, and took part in Anti-Vietnam war protests.
Career
In 1971, Kalman returned to New York City where he was hired by Leonard Riggio for a small bookstore that eventually became Barnes & Noble. A college dropout with no formal training in design, Kalman claimed that working on window displays at the store was his opportunity to "get out of the basement where (he) was alphabetizing books". As the store grew into a national chain, he became the creative director of their in-house design department, where he created advertisements, store signs, shopping bags, and the original B&N bookplate trademark. As the head of Barnes & Noble's design team for 11 years, Kalman was behind their brand identity design. Carol Bokuniewicz, and Liz Trovato – started the design firm M & Co., which did corporate work for such diverse clients as the Limited Corporation, the new wave rock group Talking Heads, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, the Whitney Museum, and Restaurant Florent in New York City's Meatpacking District. He sought to challenge mundane design thinking and aspired to create unpredictable work.
Colors magazine
Kalman and Oliviero Toscani started the Benetton-sponsored magazine Colors in 1991. Two years later, Kalman closed M & Co. and moved to Rome, to work exclusively on Colors. and juxtaposition of photographs and doctored images, including a series in which highly recognizable figures such as the Pope and Queen Elizabeth were depicted as racial minorities. They met while attending NYU.
Death and legacy
The onset of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma forced Kalman to leave Colors in 1995 and return to New York. In 1997, he re-opened M & Co. and continued to work until his death on May 2, 1999, in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico.
Publications
- Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist, a book about Kalman's work and that with M&Co, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 1999. Tibor Kalman (Designer); Peter Hall, Michael Bierut (Editors); Kurt Andersen, Steven Heller, Rick Poynor, Paola Antonelli, David Byrne, Jay Chiat, Jenny Holzer, Isaac Mizrahi, Florent Morellet, Leonard Riggio, Rebecca Robertson, Ingrid Sischy, Elizabeth Sussman, Olivero Toscani (Contributors)