(June 23, 1908 – January 3, 1991)
Cipe Pineles was a pioneer in the world of graphic design, breaking several glass ceilings as a woman in a male-dominated profession. But her long career working as an editorial designer established her as an extraordinary talent who forever changed that world through her innovations, especially for magazines.
Pineles was born in Austria but immigrated to New York when she was a teenager. She received a scholarship after graduating high school allowing her to enroll in the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1926. Her early artwork there revealed her love of food, but her career took her into the commercial print industry, primarily magazines. Despite facing obstacles resulting from
the ever-prevalent sexism at the time, she managed to begin her career at Contempora, Ltd. She was discovered there by the wife of Conde Nast and offered a position as assistant to the Conde Nast Publications’ art director. Under his tutelage, she learned the intricacies of art direction for magazines and eventually became the first female art director of a mass-market magazine, Glamour. Her career continued as later extended her talents at such publications as Seventeen, Charm, Vogue, Mademoiselle, and Vanity Fair. She later became the graphic design consultant for the Lincoln Center for the Arts, responsible for creating their branding and marketing materials.
Pineles simultaneously taught design at Parsons Institute and later was the Andrew Mellon Professor at Cooper Union. Her love of food, recipes, and cooking continued to be a source of great personal joy and comfort throughout her life. In fact, while teaching at Parsons, she led her class in publishing the Parsons Bread Book, a collection of stories about New York bakeries that was named one of AIGA’s top fifty books of the year.
As a woman in a male-dominated field, Pineles established herself as a model for the many women that later entered the field. She is renowned for a career that established many “firsts” in her chosen profession. When she earned the position of art director of Glamour, she was the first woman to garner such a position. She was the first art director to hire fine artists, such as Andy Warhol and Ben Shahn, to illustrate mass-market publications. She was the first woman to be welcomed into the New York Art Directors Club and then later was the first woman to be inducted into their Hall of Fame. She continued to earn numerous art direction and publication design awards, in many cases being the first female to earn such awards by herself, without being paired with a male counterpart.
“Upon seeing the social limits in recognizing female interests in magazine ads, Pineles consciously addressed and supported American female’s values and roles in her editorial spreads. She wanted women and girls to see themselves involved and in control of knowledge and destinies in modern time while not losing their usual interest in beauty and fashion.”
Work Cited
Biography by Martha Scotford September 3. “Cipe Pineles.” AIGA, www.aiga.org/medalist-cipepineles.
DesignWorkLife. “Badass Lady Creatives [in History]: Cipe Pineles.” Design Work Life, 22 Jan. 2014, designworklife.com/2014/01/22/cipe-pineles/.
“Celebrating Women in Design: Cipe Pineles – Opus Design.” Opus Design – Boston Web Design and Graphic Design, 3 Jan. 2020, opusdesign.us/wordcount/celebrating-women-in-design-cipe-pineles/.
CIPE PINELES, www.cipepineles.com/.
Strizver, Ilene. “The Illustrious (& Illustrative) World of Cipe Pineles.” CreativePro Network, 7 May 2019, creativepro.com/the-illustrious-illustrative-world-of-cipe-pineles/.
