William Golden (graphic designer)

William Golden (March 31, 1911 – October 23, 1959) was an American graphic designer. He is best known for his work at Columbia Broadcasting System, starting in the CBS Radio promotion department (before broadcast television existed) and culminating in his tenure as creative director of advertising and sales promotion for CBS Television Network. Golden gained a reputation of excellence by always striving for a perfect, simple solution to the problem at hand, producing an original and distinguished design to convey the message.

William Golden was born in lower Manhattan on March 31, 1911, the youngest of twelve children. His only formal schooling was at the Vocational School for Boys, where he learned photoengraving and the basics of commercial design. Upon his graduation from school in 1928, the seventeen-year-old Golden left home and moved to Los Angeles to work for a photoengraving and lithography firm, and while in Los Angeles he also worked in the art department of the Examiner. Golden returned to New York in the early 1930s, where he worked first as a promotional designer for Hearst's Journal American before joining the staff of House & Garden magazine, a production of Condé Nast Publications. While at Condé Nast, Golden met his wife, the graphic designer Cipe Pineles, and came to serve as an apprentice to Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha, art director of Condé Nast Publications.

In 1937, Golden left Condé Nast and joined the promotion department at CBS, where he worked for three years before being promoted to art director. Golden's design program went beyond the promotion of CBS as a radio network, producing advertisements that helped to define radio as a news medium. His ads emphasized the ability of radio to bring historic events to its audience in a way no other medium could at that time. Golden took a leave of absence in 1941 to join the Office of War Information in Washington, D.C. In 1943, he entered the U.S. Army as a private, and served in Europe as art director of army training manuals. He was discharged from the military in 1946 with the rank of captain.

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