VINCENT

Designers talk about getting started. You hear some say they found “inspiration” from a poster from the Bauhaus, or a magazine cover from the 60s. But the good designers work from their own experience—in life, with people, and with nature.

We just lost a great observer, Vincent Winter (1947-2024). He took it all in—and then brought it back out in type and photos.

I was able to work with him for more than twenty years, first at Rolling Stone where he appeared in the art department bullpen in 1975. He was a Californian; he went to school at San Francisco State, but then set off to Africa with his partner-in-life, Martine. On their return they seemed, like nomads, to be ready to resume the journey at any time.
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Vincent was small in stature and stood with a slight bend. He always dressed like a well-traveled bohemian, with jackets that seemed to come from Paris or maybe Morocco and interesting boots that were broken in but always shined. His silvery eyes had a slight twinkle as though he found all the proceedings vaguely amusing. He had a big head with a leonine shock of white hair—in his 20s. The look served him well, since he never seemed to age.

In the first year at Rolling Stone he was quickly promoted to assistant art director, then associate art director, and moved with the magazine to New York in 1977. As chief art director, I was never one to hand out sketches for staffers to implement. We collaborated . . . on the theory that two heads are better than one.

This was not always easy. We would argue like a crazy family. Every image, every typeface, every layout could be challenged. I would start something, then Vincent would take it, and soon he would run back into my office, shouting, “Why don’t you try this?”

He put a name to the typographical style we were developing: “Old-style Constructivism.” We started with a traditional, bookish page, using old typefaces from elegant 1920s revivals of Aldine Latins to clumsy strong 19th century wood types, and then turned it on their side, sometimes literally. We’d take the Modern grids and corrupt them with sweet fonts that Herbert Bayer would never use. The result was somehow fresh. Graphic design is all about tension, and we created energy by driving contemporary shapes and esthetics into traditional pages.

Other great designers, attracted by this energy, joined us. But for me there was no one like Vincent to work with. He helped me understand what I was trying to do. We challenged each other constantly. The result was published work that neither of us could have done alone.
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After Rolling Stone, he worked as an art director for other magazines in New York, including Newsweek’s Inside Sports. In the mid-80s he moved with Martine to Paris, where he quickly became part of the design scene there. He already spoke French and his work showed the essential connection between language, culture, and type.

We set up a studio called WB Associées. My partnerships in other countries, like Danilo Black in Mexico, put the local partner first in the name, but Vincent thought “Winter Black” was a double négatif, like “nuclear winter.”

Business was good, and in 1995 we opened the Paris branch of Interactive Bureau to design websites. During the heady media years at the end of 20th century, Vincent and Martine organized a jamboree for all of our partners from Europe and the Americas—more than 20 print and digital designers including some from the Font Bureau.

The venue was a beautiful chateau near Chartres. The gala dinner was in a nearby abbaye, but Vincent wanted more fun, and so he charted a small fleet of hot air balloons, one for each country. He said, “We should have a race!” Then he considered that might be dangerous, so he proposed that we race the clock. “The balloon wins that goes the farthest before sunset!” Well, we did it. It was hard to find everyone in the dark, and no one remembers who won. But no one who was there will forget the hot air balloon race.
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No one who knew him will forget Vincent.

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Many designers fall into their line of work after trying fine art or writing. Vincent did both and was successful at both, and that was not all. His photographs were published in beautiful books, and he had one-man shows in galleries. He even to his poetry published, for God’s sake. But it was in typographic design, the intersection of language, culture, and art that he was home.

If there were dreams unfulfilled, it is because he never stopped dreaming. He kept exploring . . . and observing. He never failed, yet he often felt unsatisfied. Not because he did not go all over the world, but because he was always ready to go someplace new.

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Photo: Courtesy Martine Winter. Spread from Rolling Stone: 1978.