Lou Dorfsman, who for more than 40 years designed every aspect of the Columbia Broadcasting Company’s advertising and corporate identity, including the set of Walter Cronkite’s newsroom and the typographically elegant sign system for CBS’s New York headquarters, known as Black Rock, died on Wednesday in Roslyn, N.Y. He was 90.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said his daughter, Elissa Dorfsman.
Mr. Dorfsman’s work became a model for corporate communications, in the marketing discipline now called branding. In 1946, when he joined CBS as art director for its successful radio networks, the company was already a leader in both advertising and the relatively new field of corporate identity. Frank Stanton, then CBS’s president, understood the business value of sophisticated design and had earlier hired William Golden as the overall art director; in 1951 Golden designed the emblematic CBS eye, among the most identifiable logos in the world.
Mr. Dorfsman not only extended Golden’s aesthetic by combining conceptual clarity and provocative visual presentation, but developed his own signature style of graphic design.
Unlike so many product advertisements created by Madison Avenue, which in the 1940s and ’50s were visually mundane and text-heavy, Mr. Dorfsman’s designs featured clear typography, simple slogans and smart illustration. He also commissioned work from Feliks Topolski, a portraitist, and the printmaker and painter Ben Shahn, though Shahn was then under scrutiny by the House Un-American Activities Committee for his affiliation with leftist groups and causes.
The advertisement Mr. Dorfsman designed for a CBS News series on black history.
Mr. Dorfsman’s ad for a CBS News examination of the Warren Report findings.
