New at Pentagram
The New York Jets Training Center: A Place for ‘Hard Knocks’
Pentagram favorites the New York Jets are set for another winning season this year. Last season, the Jets’ 50th, the team made the playoffs, advancing to the AFC Championship Game. Led by visionary owner Robert Wood “Woody” Johnson IV, the team has a new coach, Rex Ryan, a new stadium, and a roster of star players like QB Mark Sanchez, Nick Mangold and Santonio Holmes. Now Gang Green gets its close-up in the new season of HBO’s Hard Knocks, the sports reality series that follows a single NFL team through its pre-season training camp. The show premieres this Wednesday, August 11.
One of the Jets’ newest winning members is its training center, which serves as the remarkable setting of Hard Knocks. The building was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Roger Duffy, and everything about the training center is focused on improving the performance of the players and team.
This extends to the building’s bold and aggressive graphics designed by Michael Gericke and his team at Pentagram. Using the identity we previously developed for the Jets, the graphics have been integrated into the architecture to create a holistic environment that fosters a sense of pride, focus and competition for the team and carries the spirit of the Jets onto the training field.
Officially called the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center, the camp is the most modern training facility in the NFL and doubles as the corporate headquarters for the team. The 217,000-square foot, 27-acre complex in Florham Park, New Jersey, houses the practice facilities and business operations of the Jets, its players, coaches, corporate officers and medical team, and is also used for visits with sponsors, press and fans. The Jets previously trained at Hofstra University and had its corporate offices in Manhattan; the new center gives the team its own home and unites players and corporate staff under one roof, working together to win.
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New Work: Frank Sinatra School of the Arts
Tony Bennett is known for his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” but his favorite place is actually Astoria, Queens, where he was born 84 years ago this week. (Happy Birthday, Tony!) As a gift to his old neighborhood, Bennett and his wife, Susan Benedetto, a former public school teacher, established in 2001 the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, a New York City public high school with programs in vocal and instrumental music, drama, dance, film and fine arts. (In addition to possessing legendary voice, Bennett is an accomplished painter.) The school is named in homage to Bennett’s friend, Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra.
Originally located in a shared space in Long Island City, the school opened its own new five-story building in Astoria last fall. The school is adjacent to the Kaufman Astoria Studios and the Museum of the Moving Image at the intersection of 35th Avenue and 36th Street and has helped transform the neighborhood into a bustling arts district in the heart of Astoria. Designed by Susan Rodriguez of Ennead Architects, and funded by the New York City School Construction Authority, the state-of-the-art building includes a concert hall, black box theaters, dance studios, recording studio, media center and a rooftop courtyard for outdoor performances.
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Grey Group Signage in Metropolis
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New Work: Kanuhura Resort
John Rushworth has designed the identity and signage for Kanuhura, a luxury resort on a remote atoll in the Maldives. It was one of the first five star hotels in the region and is the most remote in its class. It is further distinguished from its competitors by being the only one to have been developed locally rather than by an international hotel group.
Authenticity and remoteness provide the key to the resort’s success and the basis for Pentagram’s ‘Castaway Chic’ brand positioning. This celebrates the contrast between simple desert island living and five star luxury.
New Work: Achievement First Endeavor Middle School
With a little paint and some bold typography, a school designed to change the life of its students has undergone a transformation of its own. For the Achievement First Endeavor Middle School, a charter school for grades 5 through 8 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, Paula Scher has created a program of environmental graphics that help the school interiors become a vibrant space for learning. The project was completed in collaboration with Rogers Marvel Architects, who designed the school as a refurbishment and expansion of an existing building.
Achievement First is a network of public charter schools in Brooklyn and Connecticut. With the support of the Robin Hood Foundation, Achievement First seeks to provide students in urban areas with an education that will put them on the path to college. Endeavor Middle School has a student body of about 300 and is ranked number four in the best K to eight schools in New York City. The students at Endeavor have a reputation for taking pride in their school, and the new graphics capture this confident spirit.
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War Memorial for the London Science Museum Short-Listed
Harry Pearce’s War Memorial for the London Science Museum has been nominated in the graphics category of the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year.
The annual exhibition and awards held at the Design Museum showcase 100 projects from seven design disciplines, architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics, interactive, product and transport. Artist Antony Gormley will chair the jury.
The exhibition will run from 17 February to 6 June and the winner will be revealed at the awards dinner on 16 March.
AZ Cardinals’ Home Named Best Sports Stadium of the Decade
Sports Illustrated has named the University of Phoenix Stadium the best new sports venue of the decade. The bold environmental graphics for the Arizona Cardinals’ home were developed by Michael Gericke and his team and have received a long series of honors. The 1.7 million-square-foot stadium has quickly become one of the central venues in the sports world and was the site of Super Bowl XLII. The Cardinals have sold out every game they have played in four seasons at the stadium. Congratulations to the Cardinals, who were the NFC champs in last season’s Super Bowl, have just clinched the NFC West Division and are now headed to the playoffs. Go Big Red!
Grey Group Signage on the SEGD Blog
Quick Link: Grey Group Signage on the SEGD Blog
New Work: Grey Group
A creative company needs an innovative workspace. For Grey Group, one of the largest marketing communications companies in the world, a move to a new, state-of-the-art headquarters in the Flatiron District, a New York design center, symbolized a renewed commitment to creativity. Paula Scher has developed an inventive program of environmental graphics for the offices, which were designed by Studios Architecture.
Grey moved from a sedate midtown location to 200 Fifth Avenue, the former International Toy Center, a century-old landmark building that once housed several toy companies. (Grey is our new neighbor; the building is a short two blocks away from Pentagram’s offices at 204 Fifth.) Grey Group is part of industry giant WPP and counts among its clients blue-chip companies like Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Canon, 3M and Eli Lilly. The Grey divisions at the new headquarters include: Grey New York, its flagship advertising agency; G2, its activation marketing agency; and Cohn & Wolfe, its sister company and PR partner. In the new headquarters these divisions are located from the second to sixth floors, with an entrance lobby on the first floor.
Scher and Studios previously collaborated on the interiors of the Bloomberg L.P. headquarters, where Scher developed an environment of numbers that was a three-dimensional manifestation of the Bloomberg brand. For Grey, Scher has designed graphically playful signage that captures and promotes the creativity of the company’s various divisions. The program utilizes materials used in the interior design to create a series of optical illusions that brand the agency in the space. “It’s a house of visual games,” says Scher.
Cooper Union Signage on the SEGD Blog
Quick Link: Cooper Union Signage on the SEGD Blog
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