Lance Wyman

Wyman, the son of a commercial fisherman and a typist,^[2] grew up in Kearny, New Jersey, where he worked in the factories during summers to pay for college. He acquired an appreciation for the "no-nonsense functional aesthetic of the sea and the factories", which he has described as "an important influence in my approach to design."^[1] He graduated from the Pratt Institute with a degree in industrial design in 1960. The subject of graphic design was just being introduced in American universities at the time; when Wyman met a student who studied logo design with Paul Rand at Yale, he wanted to design logos.^[1]

Wyman began his career at General Motors in Detroit, Michigan, where he worked on a packaging system for Delco automotive parts that unified 1,200 different packages. Later, he moved to the office of William Schmidt, where he produced the graphics for the U.S. pavilion at a 1962 trade fair in Zagreb, Yugoslavia.^[1]

In 1963, Wyman moved to New York, where he joined the George Nelson firm. He designed the graphics for the Chrysler Pavilion at the New York World's Fair. He later reported that devising a "pointing hand" themed logo and adapting it to the site directional signs convinced him that logos could play a more important role in an overall design program.^[1] In December 1966, he traveled to Mexico City to work at Pedro Ramírez Vázquez's office, and worked with many other designers in the identity program of the 1968 Summer Olympic Games. Wyman stopped working for the organizing committee in October 1968, he then designed the graphics programs for the Mexico City Metro.

After returning to New York, Wyman formed a partnership with Bill Cannan (Wyman & Cannan). In 1979, he established his own firm, Lance Wyman Ltd. He has also taught corporate and wayfinding design at Parsons School of Design since 1973.^[1]