Tom Geismar

Tom Geismar is a founding partner of Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv and widely considered a pioneer of American graphic design. Over the past four decades he has designed more than a hundred corporate identity programs. His designs for Xerox, Chase Manhattan Bank, Best Products, Gemini Consulting, PBS, Univision, Rockefeller Center, and—most notably—Mobil Oil have received worldwide acclaim.

Tom has also had major responsibility for many of the firm’s exhibition designs and world’s fair pavilions. His projects include such major tourist attractions as the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, the Statue of Liberty Museum, the Truman Presidential Library, and the redesigned Star-Spangled Banner exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

He has received all the major awards in the field, including one of the first Presidential Design Awards for helping to establish a national system of standardized transportation symbols. In 2014, Tom Geismar received the prestigious National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement; he was also awarded an exhibition in the School of Visual arts annual Masters Series. Tom Geismar concurrently attended the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown, he received a master’s degree in graphic design from the Yale University School of Art and Architecture.

Photo © Mark Dudlik.