Aged 7, Tibor immigrated to the USA. As a literature student at NY University, he worked in the local bookstore. Without any training, he took on a job designing the store’s displays, advertising and packaging when the regular designer failed to show up. He opened his own design studio M&Co in 1979. The work expanded from print to motion graphics, products and large urban installations. He closed the studio in 1993 and moved to Rome to become the founding editor of Benetton’s ‘magazine about the rest of the world’, Colors. Kalman was able to exercise his commitment to social change with 12 issues. Contracting cancer, he returned to NY in 1995, and worked on an equally wide range of projects until his death. About design’s mission, he wrote: ‘We’re not here to help clients eradicate everything of visual interest from the face of the earth. We’re here to make them think about design that’s dangerous and unpredictable. We’re here to inject art into commerce. We’re here to be bad.’