Alvin Eisenman ’43

Alvin Eisenman ’43 died September 13, 2013, at his Martha’s Vineyard home in Chilmark, Massachusetts. Al graduated from the Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York. At Dartmouth Al majored in art and English and was editor-in-chief of the Jack-O-Lantern. Robert Frost was one of his teachers. During WW II Al served in the Signal Corps, where he designed field manuals. Post-war he designed books for McGraw-Hill and Yale University Press until 1950, when he joined the faculty of Yale’s School of Fine Arts. Soon thereafter he founded and headed Yale’s graduate program in graphic design—the first in the United States. He recruited outstanding design masters as teachers and sought outstanding students from around the world, including Gerry Trudeau of “Doonesbury” fame and Min Wang, who designed the graphics for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. He thought his students should learn all aspects of their craft. Al was a past president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. In 1960 Yale gave him an honorary M.A., and in 1990 he was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor from the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Al retired in 1990, but continued to teach. He and his wife, Hope, owned a farm in Bethany, Connecticut, where for nearly 40 years Al was a trustee and in 1995 president of the Bethany Library. Al is survived by Hope, children Susan, James and Sara, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.