Archtober 2013

It may be October in the rest of the world, but in New York it's the month of Archtober, the annual festival of architecture and design. For the third year running, Pentagram's Luke Hayman and team have designed the graphics for the event, building on the yellow rectangle of the Archtober identity they developed for the inaugural edition in 2011. For the third festival, this simple graphic frame has been joined by the three-sided shape of a triangle.

The designers chose to use a scalene triangle, with sides of three different sizes, because it can be varied for different graphic applications and is visually more interesting than an isosceles (or equilateral) triangle.

Hayman and his team once again helped create a special Archtober visitors lounge at the Center for Architecture, a headquarters for everything that's going on during the month. For this year's installation, the designers blacked out the gallery's storefront window except for a triangle that allows passersby to get a glimpse inside. In the gallery, a digital display showcases the Building of the Day (31 New York City structures that are open for special tours) and other daily events. Light from the triangular cut-out in the window streams into the darkened space, creating a contrast that is referenced in the applications of the festival graphics, which feature a gradient from dark to light.

In what is becoming an Archtober tradition, one of the walls of the visitors lounge has been transformed into a supergraphic calendar of the month's events. For the first year, the pages of a giant wall calendar were ripped off to kick off each day; last year, a large arrow moved along a timeline that ran along the wall. This year, the calendar is composed of 31 yellow pages affixed to the wall, each one listing the day's events; at the start of the day, a corner of the page is folded over, forming another triangle.

The team also designed a printed guide for the festival that is available for download. Get your copy of the guide here.