“Hey! Carnase here,” the voice in the telephone said.

“Be right down, Tom,” my hurried reply.

And that was the beginning of the re-invention of an acquaintance, friendship, and inspiration with a true design hero that had misplaced itself for several years— my friend, Tom Carnase.

It is a reunion that would last for several hours on this evening.

Tom is not a hero simply because of the work he has done but because of the humanity he is, a side that most don’t know… the personal ethos he is, is one we might all wish to live our lives by.

As for the design side and all the visions of his work, this is a man who has lived 3 professional lives because he started so young. His work was prolific because that was the work ethic of the time. Something to be remembered by us all today as a goal for renewal.

His age is upon him now, but his eyes are always shiny, dark and piercing- they are rhetorical and full of curiosity, and his smile is always sharing. Here’s a man who lived, worked in the era of Paul Rand, Milton Glaser, Herb Lubalin— he was Herb’s partner for much of his career. Then Herb was his client. It was a time when Lou Dorfsman was ‘Uncle Louie.’

Hearken to those days of craft and skill, they defined the excellence— an ‘em’ was an ‘em,’ and ‘rivers’ were not promises of postmodern whimsy, but of a relative measure; it was a time when proportion governed balance; aesthetics called out beauty, not incoherence or fragmentation. Tom was all of these things.

Hurriedly, I rushed down the long hall from my room of the retro Hotel Parker to meet Tom, whom I hadn’t visited with in person since the late 90’s. Speedily, rounding the corner to the stairs, grabbing onto the decorative metal railing, taking one step and 20 in the same moment, and there was Tom as I hustled down the stairs.

Good vibrations… .. an embrace and a handshake renewing a friendship.

Tom, the proverbial Bronx’ian, transformed and residing now amongst the hills of Gene Autry, where winds of the huge mountains surround you like tributes to the happy trails, and the wide open spaces in this west are as if the sun fades the shadows in color.

Tom has become a inspired proclaimer of modernist architecture… to a large degree, that is how he has ended up in Palm Springs of all places.

“Hank, I never dreamed, never thought in my life, I would get to see you again, and in Palm Springs! How’d you find me?”

All the while I’m thinking, Tom it is you. I should be saying that to you. The man is so very humble, outspoken, but often not realizing his own importance to a generation, to a profession that values excellence today because of things he created, he valued.

Leaving the hotel grounds, we swing off toward the heart of the City, and Tom excitedly shares his hospitality as he tours me to see the Modernist architecture of Palm Springs he so loves.

How amazing… the Butterfly houses-to-Steel houses, the expression of simple truths and aesthetic values that draw out principles. His own new home under renovation for the next several months. A lesson in Modernist architecture as the sun sets down on an evening in Palm Springs.

Dinner is served, as we swing around to restaurant row… reservations have slipped behind us as we got lost in the ideals of Modernism, but expectations are still we’ll have a place at the dinner table… the Tropicale.

The second chapter is a several-hour adventure.

Tom looks across the table, and says,”Hank, life is not calculated by the number of breaths you take, but the moment that takes your breath away, and that has been my philosophy- my work, my adventures.”

But, let me back it up a moment, set the tale for future young designers who might find their inspiration… a young Bronx boy with a brogue that distinctly says New Yorker, Tom started out knowing he had a special skill, a skill he sharpened between memory, drawing, to a rare vision that implied the ideal and brought ‘tactics’ to an art.

He began as a young turk working for John Pistilli at Sudler & Hennessey Advertising, back in 1960. Sudler & Hennessey is still out there now, a part of the global holding company WPP. A pharmaceutical agency of note- to all those who might snub the ability to do creative work in such an arena, I would share this is where Lubalin’s and Carnase’s amazing work was first done. A good job, or for that matter a bad job, is always defined by the way you reinvent yourself on each day.

Tom at first was a freelancer, not hired on one way or the other… then he got on… as he and Herb Lubalin sort of hit it off. Well, he knew he wasn’t going to stay with the agency forever, but it was good for the moment and besides Herb had taken a liking to Tom. They seemed to work so very well together.

Bold as bold may be, Tom eventually decided to leave and move on to California… Herb gave him some amazing leads, and off he went. He interviewed with great people, but all they wanted was for him to work freelance, and he wanted a salary such that he might center himself.

Well, as he says, “tail between his legs” somewhat, he returned to Manhattan, and as he hadn’t resigned but taken a leave of absence, his job was still there… and, as luck would have it, one of the designers had moved on, so his break began.

Lubalin really liked him, and fed him work consistently. Tom spent late hours, loved the work, loved the opportunity.

In the middle of our chat at the table, Tom interrupts the lesson and says, waving his hands about,” Magic, it is like magic, Hank. You just know it is magic. You work, he works… you don’t even have to speak… it is magic.”

So began the studio of Carnase and Bonder. Ronnie had been a mechanical artist, and they set up a new studio that grew to become busy- busier- to the busiest… “One day we were two, then we were 30. If someone came along with a project for $100 we’d do it, if they came along with a project for $5000, we’d do it. If they came along with a project for $200,000 we’d do it. We just worked and produced amazing work. At one point Carnase and Bonder were the hottest firm in New York.

Then Herb decides to leave the agency Sudler & Hennessey and strike out… off he goes. As these things happened, Tom was invited to go with him… and took the chance. The firm was Lubalin, Smith and Carnase. Ernie Smith was a pharmaceutical art director from the days of Sudler & Hennessey.

Amazing work they did—a seemingly never ending amount and prominent design that defined the time we were. They took two small rooms at 23rd East 31st Street… “that was the agency… the three of us and Henrietta Lejinski who managed the office.”

The growth of that period then led to the formation of the World Typeface Center.

Now the waiter appears, and I want some tea. “Hold on— hot tea… make that Ginger Twist… do you have it in decaf? No, o.k., Jerry, make that a mighty leaf and the real thing.”

Tom interrupts and says, “Hank, you don’t want that decaf anyway. It’s not good for you. They have to use chemicals to take out the caffeine, and the chemicals stay behind.” See, Tom’s a bona fide vegetarian and gets the difference between olive oil and canola oil.

He continues, “You have to learn to draw, and you have to teach students to learn to draw. That is the difference. You are ‘The teacher’” … I never thought of myself that way before, which might surprise those reading this, but until that very moment it never dawned on me. To me, ‘The teacher’ was always Milton Glaser.

“You don’t use your tools as a means of getting there. You use your head as a means of getting there. And that is what drawing does for you. You have to teach this,” he finished.

I still haven’t suggested much about the work of Tom, which, by the way, he has donated to the Rochester Institute of Technology his original drawings, sketches, pen-and-ink drawings, layouts, type designs, and mechanicals. And today his work is still out there everywhere you turn. The interesting codicil to his gift is that the volumes and volumes of work— “I would draw the rough letter, Hank, and then I would go over it with a tissue paper 3 to 4 times, and by the time I had finished the 4th drawing, it was perfect”— can never be copied or scanned.

The work is there for all to see. It is there for students to learn from. They may go and view, but they cannot scan any of them.

Night has doubled back on the day, and we walk out of the restaurant to see high on a mountain top one starry light. Tom says, “That is a restaurant on top you can see all of California from.”

My take was the sky is so very clear, a blueish black blended in a sweep from light to dark with the moon at 1/4 crescent hanging.

330 East Amado Avenue is a high recommendation if you are hungry on a night in the desert.

Carnase… what a gentleman… what a talent.

Did I say, somewhere around 103 typefaces designed; and look at Fortune magazine, it’s Tom’s logo on the front; Consumer Reports—his logo on their magazine; Avant Garde, Busorama, WTC Goudy, Grouch, Honda, Machine, Manhattan, Pioneer, Tom’s Roman, Bolt Bold, WTC, Our Bodoni, 223 Caslon, Milano Roman, WRC, Our Futura are a few of the typefaces I remember…And remember the refreshing of Saks Fifth Avenue’s identity just a bit ago… it was in original Carnase’s Idea, and Refresh?

Perhaps you’ve picked up a copy of Barron’s financial paper— imagine it was finalized in one rough draft, and it has remained all these years- that is what you see on the newsstands, or, as one student, Christine, wrote me when she heard I was going to be catching up to Tom on this weekend, her words, “How interesting to know— Tom Carnase executed the work and final comps for Gastrotypographicalassemblage for Lou Dorfsman. What a monumental piece to have been a part of.”

And, Tom, if you read this… when you ask about the passion of the new students of design, go figure. You are part of the inspiration.

It is somewhat paradoxical that in the moments of making history, to Tom it was simply “Uncle Louie.” There he was in that relationship, a design zeitgeist in a moment.

I asked Tom about doing a book. Actually, I have asked him over and over about it for some years… He holds out.

In that stage between all the work you have done and the time you die… he wants the space to do what he wants to do. One of those things is restoring his own Modernist steel home.

Let me talk to someone.

“No, Hank…I will let history judge me by my work. That is the way it is supposed to be. If I did a book it would be for the wrong reasons, and that wouldn’t be right.”

Well, Tom maybe I’ll write a book about you. Or just maybe I will have a student do a book about you.

There are some amazing students of this time, as Tom was in his time… and their passions burn, and they have much, just as much, to offer… and they will figure it out in their way for sure.

Carnase is a part of the eloquence of history, and his inspiration inspires so many.

“Thanks, Tom… it was a great dinner”

“Wait, Hank, I must come in. I brought you a gift. My stationery, Carnase.”

“Tom, thank you so much. Please do sign it.”

“I am not going to put the usual ‘to my friend, Hank’… I am going to sign it and put the date on it”— as if knowing something of his own immortality and place in history, in the future that will be something of value.

But the value is, it is a gift from Tom, and I will always treasure that, along with one other gift, a few of the famous, “Hi” buttons, from the past pop culture… “Give them to your students.”

“I will, Tom. I will.”

The night is still young but the journey is afar and off to San Diego, I must go now, realizing how special this moment in time. The faster, the more we go, the less we are able to get back, if ever… but in your mind you can be inspired forever. Creativity is indeed the artist in each of us, and in a moment that is about relationships, how we go together, how we fit…

This is art.

Tom Carnase is a precious moment.

Hank.

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