Michael Bierut’s ‘How to’ Updated With Second Edition
The Pentagram partner releases a revised and expanded version of his 2015 monograph.
Pentagram’s Michael Bierut shares more of his work in a newly revised and expanded edition of his 2015 career monograph, How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world, published by Harper Design in the US.
The updated book covers over 40 projects from start to finish—adding case studies of work for major clients completed since the earlier edition, such as Mastercard, Verizon, The Poetry Foundation, the International Center for Photography, and Bierut’s brand design for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Conceived as a design manual, How to… takes readers through the creation of all types of work, from identity, logos and branding to environmental graphics, packaging, books and websites, many times all in one project. Bierut frames each of these as a specific challenge: “How to design two dozen logos at once” documents the flexible identity for MIT; “How to keep it simple” looks at the streamlined Mastercard logo.
The new version can be recognized by its black book jacket, in contrast to the white of the first edition. Underneath, it’s still bound in a black-and-white marble pattern inspired by the composition notebooks Bierut uses to sketch and refine his ideas (covered in “How to Think With Your Hands.”)
