By now, the story is well known. A man sits in the backseat of a cab, sketching on a notepad as night falls over a crumbling city. He scribbles the letter I. He draws a heart. And then an N, and then a Y. Right away he knows he’s got something. This is it, he thinks. This is the campaign.

The man was a designer named Milton Glaser. The city was New York. The year was 1977. A time and place commemorated by an entire genre of movies dedicated to making it look like a horrifying place to live.

The city needed a miracle. And it kind of got one in three letters and a symbol:

Today, I ♥ NY is everywhere. It’s on t-hirts, hats, towels, plastic bags, oven mitts.

Milton Glaser created the design pro bono for the Empire State Development Corporation, the agency that handles tourism for the state of New York—so the ‘NY’ actually refers to all of New York state, not just the city.

Both New York City and state have their own official flag, but the heart logo may as well be it. And like any good flag, the logo can inspire a sense of civic pride.

The I Love NY campaign was that it was so successful that it became part of the built environment. So people started doing with I Love NY the same thing that humans have always done when encountering something in nature.

They started imitating it.



Wendy Bryan owner and proprietor of I Heart Guts, a company that sells that anatomically correct plush dolls of internal organs. Wendy started I Heart Guts in 2005 as a t-shirt business. One shirt was in the style of I ♥ NY.

A few months later (on her birthday), Wendy got a cease and desist letter from CMG Worldwide, the firm that represents the New York State Development of Economic Development. CMG said that her shirt was in violation of the I ♥ NY trademark.

Wendy altered the shirts to create an entire cease and desist limited edition series of I Heart Guts merchandise.