New at Pentagram
Yale Architecture Posters in Creativity
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New Work: North Carolina Museum of Art
Often, museum graphics err on the side of anonymity, assuming that art needs a recessive frame to shine. Not so at the North Carolina Museum of Art, which will be dramatically transformed this year. An expansion building designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners opening in April will add 127,000 square feet of exhibition space to the museum’s original 1983 building by Edward Durell Stone. Adjacent to the these buildings is a 449-seat open-air amphitheater; the entire complex is set within a 164-acre park filled with sculpture and walking trails.
Pentagram was asked to create a new signage and wayfinding program as well as a new graphic identity that would reflect the boldness of the museum’s transformation.
Viva ‘Las Vegas’
In 1968, the architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown took a group of their students from the Yale School of Architecture on an expedition to Las Vegas to study the realities of contemporary American architecture. What they discovered, and documented, was spontaneous, messy, and commercial, built for cars and big signs. The resulting manifesto, Learning From Las Vegas, written with Steven Izenour and published in 1972, helped shift the focus of American architectural thought away from rigid Modernism to more varied points of view. Tonight Venturi and Scott Brown will present the keynote address at “Architecture After Las Vegas,” a major symposium on the legacy of this seminal work. The conference coincides with the exhibition What We Learned: The Yale Las Vegas Studio and the Work of Venturi Scott Brown & Associates, on view at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery through 5 February. “We may need these two architects as much now as ever,” declared New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff in his review of the show.
Michael Bierut and Yve Ludwig extend Pentagram’s series of posters for Yale Architecture, now in its twelfth year, with one that, like all the others, is primarily typographic and entirely black and white—but with a Rat Pack twist. Download a copy here.
Resetting the Doomsday Clock
This morning, the Board of Directors and the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock would be moved one minute back from five to six minutes to midnight. The group, which contains 18 Nobel laureates, cited “a more hopeful state of world affairs” in their decision to indicate the world is metaphorically one step further away from annihilation. “We are poised to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons.”
To mark this event, which was followed by an worldwide audience online and through global media outlets, Pentagram created a simple tabloid information piece virtually overnight. Printed on inexpensive newsprint, it explains the purpose of the Bulletin and the Doomsday Clock in clear language and blunt, unadorned graphics. The Clock, which was created in 1947, had since become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies in the life sciences. It is the focus of the Bulletin’s graphic communications effort.
This is the 19th time the Clock has been reset. The last time, in 2007, Pentagram recommended the group adopt the Clock as its symbol, and created standards for its use. In the three years since, the Bulletin community has grown considerably. This publication’s clear statement of purpose is a indication of the group’s maturity and confidence as it moves into its second 50 years, and an invitation to join the global effort to turn back the Clock.
A look inside the piece after the jump.
Go Jets!
Congratulations to the New York Jets, who earned a spot in the playoffs with their resounding 37-0 defeat of the Cincinnati Bengals in last night’s season finale, the last game to be played in Giants Stadium. The branding standards that Pentagram created for the team in 2002, which included an expanded color scheme, a custom typeface by Hoefler & Frere-Jones, and a flexible graphic kit of parts, is still in use today and will follow the team to their new home next year. Our favorite? The team’s popular NY insignia, which combines H & FJ’s typography with a football-shaped oval, both extrapolated from the graphics in the team’s original 1964 logo.
The playoffs start next week with a rematch against the Bengals. Good luck, Gang Green!
North Carolina Museum of Art Launches New Identity
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New Work: Urban Green Council
Since its founding in 1993, the U.S. Green Building Council has established itself as the nation’s leading advocate for sustainability in the built environment, most prominently as the developer of the now-ubiquitous LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards. As the group’s largest chapter, the U.S. Green Building Council New York Chapter has enjoyed considerable influence not only in metropolitan New York, but as a model for sustainability in cities around the world. But despite its considerable success, the chapter suffered an identity crisis, being frequently confused with the national organization and saddled with a ponderous, unpronounceable eight-letter acronym.
Mannahatta & Unpacking My Library Nominated in Amazon’s Best Book Covers of 2009
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New MAD Store Pops Up for the Holidays
Get set for MAD shopping this holiday season at the Museum of Arts and Design’s new Pop-Up Store on New York’s Upper East Side. The shop, located at Kate’s Paperie at 1282 Third Avenue and 74th Street, celebrates its opening with a store warming this weekend and will be poppin’ through the holidays until January 15, 2010.
We designed an identity for the store using the MAD Face we created for the museum identity. This identity features on several groovy gifts, and the shop also offers apparel, books and unique products made by artists and designers. The 1200 sq ft space includes a window installation by Mia Pearlman, one of the artists featured in the museum’s current exhibition, Slash: Paper Under the Knife.
New Work: ‘Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future’
The great Finnish-born architect Eero Saarinen designed several of the iconic works of Modernist architecture in the United States: the TWA Terminal at JFK Airport, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, CBS’ “Black Rock” headquarters in New York. Amazingly, there has been no major retrospective of his work since his death in 1961. Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future is a landmark traveling exhibition organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, the Museum of Finnish Architecture, the National Building Museum and the Yale School of Architecture that looks at his work and legacy. First shown at the Kunsthalle Helsinki in 2006, the exhibition has now arrived at the Museum of the City of New York, where it opens this week.
Michael Bierut and his team designed the graphics and catalogue for the exhibition in 2006, when it opened in Helsinki, as well as for its current show at MCNY. The designers created a "kit of parts”—typography, colors, graphic motifs—that could be used to create a consistent look at all the venues and across all communications. The catalogue was included in the AIGA's 50 Books/50 Covers of 2006.
Following its Helsinki run, the exhibition traveled to the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, Norway; CIVA in Brussels, Belgium; and the Cranbrook Art Museum, the National Building Museum, the Walker Art Center and Washington University in the US. Next spring it moves on to its final stop at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale School of Architecture.
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