Award-winning, widely-celebrated artist Georg Olden (1920-1975) joined CBS in 1945 as Head of the network's on-air television promotions. A pioneer in the development of graphic arts for television, Olden was also one of the first Black executives in network TV. As an art director and artist, Olden tackled the technical limitations of the emerging electronic medium head-on – creating simple designs from the center out, to avoid the edge cropping common on early TV sets. With his bumper cards only seen on screen for short intervals, Olden often employed humor and elegant, bold graphics to memorably and quickly express the theme or tone of a program. Olden left CBS in 1960 for a career in the advertising world and later directed TV commercials. He was also commissioned to create a U.S. postal stamp to honor the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and created the elegant “equal sign” logo for the National Urban League. (Mark Quigley, Television Archivist - UCLA Film & Television Archive)
