Tibor Kalman
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Tibor Kalman (b. 1949, d. May 2, 1999) was an influential graphic designer. Kalman is most known for his work as editor of Colors magazine.
Kalman was born in Budapest and became a U.S. resident in 1956. He later attended NYU. In the 1970s Tibor worked at a small New York City bookstore that eventually became Barnes & Noble. He later became the supervisor of their in-house design department. In 1979 Kalman started his own design firm, M&Co which did corporate work for such diverse clients as the Limited Corporation and the New Wave music group, Talking Heads.
Kalman became founding editor-in-chief of the Benetton-sponsored Colors magazine in 1990. Kalman soon closed M&Co to move to Rome and work exclusively on the magazine. Billed as "a magazine about the rest of the world", Colors focused on multiculturalism and global awareness. This perspective was communicated through Kalman's bold graphic design, typography, and juxtaposition of photographs and doctored images, including a series in which highly recognizeable figures such as the Pope and Queen Elizabeth were depicted as racial minorities. Kalman remained the main creative force behind Colors until he left the magazine in 1995.
In 1997 Kalman re-opened M&Co and continue to work until he died in 1999 in Puerto Rico of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, shortly before a retrospective of his graphic design work, entitled Tiborocity opened its U.S. tour at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.