New at Pentagram
New Work: AkzoNobel
Angus Hyland and his team at Pentagram have created a brand identity that will help to consolidate AkzoNobel’s position as one of the world’s leading industrial companies. AkzoNobel is the world’s No.1 in coatings and decorative paints and also a global leader in specialty chemicals. The commission came as a response to a strategic transformation in the company, most notably marked by the divestment of its Pharma activities followed by the acquisition of ICI, whose brands included household names such as Dulux, Glidden and Polycel. The visual branding will be applied throughout the global organisation and across 80 countries over the next eighteen months.
According to John McLaren, Director of Corporate Communications, the new brand identity is important as a statement of unity and strength of purpose, “Our new positioning symbolises the transformation of AkzoNobel and our ambitions for the future. Our new brand, and its execution, will be crucial in focusing the company on those values which will make the most significant difference to our competitiveness.”
New Work: The Public Theater
Fourteen summers ago Paula Scher designed a poster for the New York Shakespeare Festival that introduced a new identity for the Public Theater, a program that would eventually influence much of the graphic design created for theatrical promotion and for cultural institutions in general. Now, with the campaign for the 2008 Shakespeare in the Park productions (Hamlet and Hair), Scher introduces a refreshed identity for the institution.
Preview: Museum of Arts and Design Identity
This September, New York’s Museum of Arts and Design will relocate to 2 Columbus Circle, the former home of A&P heir Huntington Hartford’s Gallery of Modern Art. The 1964 building, originally designed by Edward Durell Stone, has received a bold renovation by Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture, featuring a new skin of glazed terra cotta tile, and slots outside and inside the building to permit light to filter through the museum’s galleries.
Pentagram has been working over the past year on a new identity, signage program, and media installations for the new building for its debut this fall. Above, a preview of the new MAD logo. “The new symbol is built out of circles and squares, a reference to the fact this squarish building sits on one of the most prominent circles in New York City,” says designer Michael Bierut, who is working on the project with partner Lisa Strausfeld. “The forms also refer in a subtle way to the building’s distinctive, some would say notorious, ‘lollipop’ columns, which will still be visible through the new façade.” An entire alphabet, extrapolated from the three letters in the logo, will be used selectively on MAD’s marketing materials.
So Long, Ted
We learned yesterday that our longtime client United Airlines was closing down its low cost carrier, Ted. Like so many other airlines, United is consolidating in the face of brutally high fuel costs; integrating its operations in this way will permit substantial savings.
Coming up with the name and design philosophy for Ted in 2004 remains one of our favorite projects. United was looking for a name that would identify their new initiative to offer reduced-fare travel on selected routes in a casual, personal, friendly setting. Naming exercises often can be exhausting and inconclusive. What fun it was instead to discover that a friendly-sounding person had been hiding all along in United’s last three letters.
Pentagram’s work included aircraft liveries, signage, gate environments, and on-board communications, all executed in record time in collaboration with a great team at United. Ted, we’ll miss you.
New Work: World Science Festival
Luke Hayman has designed the logo for the first annual World Science Festival that opened in New York last night. The mark, which resembles an element from the periodic table, represents the festival that brings together leading researchers, educators, policy-makers and artists in an unprecedented celebration of scientific discovery. The festival continues through Sunday at 15 venues throughout the city and includes public lectures, demonstrations, performances and a street fair with family-friendly interactive exhibits. On the schedule for tonight, among other things, is a lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Oliver Sacks on the surprising relationship between vision and the brain, while at the Guggenheim Museum director/choreographer Karole Armitage will present a new work inspired by physicist Brian Greene’s bestselling book, The Elegant Universe.
New York Photo Festival Opens
Luke Hayman and Shigeto Akiyama have designed the identity for the inaugural New York Photo Festival that opened last night with a raucous block party in Dumbo, Brooklyn before it takes over the neighborhood for the coming weekend. Local landmarks like the Tobacco Warehouse and St. Ann’s Warehouse have been transformed into “pavilions” for exhibitions of contemporary photography curated by the photographer Martin Parr; Lesley A. Martin, the publisher of Aperture Books; Kathy Ryan, the photo editor of the New York Times Magazine; and Tim Barber, the former photo editor of Vice. Amazingly it is the first international photography festival to be held in the U.S.
New Work: Grant Thornton
Angus Hyland and his team have designed the new identity system for Grant Thornton international, a major global organisation of accounting and consulting firms with member and correspondent firms in over 100 countries worldwide.
The identity creates a unified international brand for the organisation’s network of independently owned and managed firms. Hyland has created a completely new logo, along with comprehensive print and website systems based around a bold illustration-led graphic approach.
New Work: New York City Ballet
Paula Scher has designed a new identity and promotional campaign for the New York City Ballet, one of the largest and most prominent dance companies in the world. The campaign, developed with Pentagram’s Lisa Kitschenberg and Luis Bravo of the NYCB, launches this week with the opening of the company’s winter season.
Mike Likes SAM
NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg shows off the new Seattle Art Museum identity during a visit to the museum giftshop. (Via Gothamist).
New Work: Ruby Tuesday
DJ Stout and his Austin design team have collaborated with Ruby Tuesday to create an entirely new visual identity for the international chain of over 900 bar and grill restaurants. The new logotype and identity system is part of the chain’s effort to upgrade its brand by creating a healthier and higher quality casual dining experience and has been applied across the board to menus, take-out bags, cups, napkins, uniforms, signage, architecture, advertising, website and even a race car.
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