I learned who Cipe Pineles was when I was in my twenties and first married to Seymour Chwast. She had been an art director of Charm and Mademoiselle at Condé Nast, as well as Seventeen. Seymour had won a competition and had his first published illustration in Seventeen while she was art director there. I had learned from Seymour that Cipe was a powerful woman, art director, and designer, and that she had been married to both the designers Will Burtin and Bill Golden. Cipe was the first female member of the Art Directors Club (it was really a “club” in those days) and she was inducted into their Hall of Fame in 1975. She was also one of the very few woman members of Alliance Graphic International.

In 1964, I started a design firm with a friend named Terry Koppel called Koppel and Scher. I had become active in AIGA and had begun writing ad hoc articles in the AIGA Journal. I had written a very snarky article about the state of recent magazine design at Condé Nast entitled “The Mystery of Conde Nasty,” in which I ranted about their stupid scrapbook style that used ripped paper and photos that were overlaid with nonsensical writing and giant pull-quotes. The piece appeared in the second or third issue of the tabloid-size AIGA Journal of Graphic Design. About a week after it appeared, I got a call at Koppel and Scher from Cipe Pineles. She loved the Condé Nasty piece, said she laughed out loud, and invited me over to her apartment for dinner.

I was surprised by the invitation and took her up on it, but I really didn’t know what to expect. When I arrived at her apartment, I found it would be just the two of us. We made some light chit chat about her apartment, Condé Nasty, my design business, the AIGA, and Parsons School of Design, where she was a department chair. Then she brought me into her kitchen, sat me down at a table and made us each a hamburger on a bun. After she finished eating, she abruptly got up, went into another room and came back with some poster or mailer in her hand. “And what do you think of this?” she asked defiantly.

It was a mailer that I had already seen for a lecture series to be held at the Art Directors Club. The poster had a black and white photo of ten or more white men, all on individual chairs, seated in a group. The headline over the picture said, “An Evening with One of the Best.” Some of the men in the picture were George Lois, Henry Wolf, Lou Dorfsman, Gene Federico, and then there were advertising guys whose names I don’t remember. But the bunch of men in the group were designers and art directors that I used to call “the machers,” which is Yiddish for “big shot.”

“Would you look at them!” Cipe said. “Not even one token woman. Not even a lousy woman designer that they all like socially!” I began laughing because it was absurd and seemingly pointless. Not all of the men were even anywhere near “the best.” They were just a social group.

We began planning our own evening lecture series called “An Evening with Ones with Big Breasts,” or some such thing, and the conversation devolved into hilarity, but the point was made and for that moment, we bonded. Later that evening, I realized that she was very hurt by the pathetic exclusion in that silly ADC program, and I would feel that same hurt for the same silly exclusions many, many times after.

She used her outrage as a bridge to form an alliance with me, and surely with many other talented but marginalized women. Her rejection of the male-dominated structure of the publishing and design industries helped move things in the direction of equality, and while things are not perfect today, women’s leadership is growing. Cipe was unwilling to be ignored and she couldn’t be; her work had its own voice, and it compelled people to listen.

Photo of Cipe at work by Ed Feingersh