The Architectural League Beaux Arts Ball 2016
Custom typography helps set the stage for the New York architecture and design community’s party of the year.
Animated identity for Tabula Rasa, the Architectural League of New York’s 2016 Beaux Arts Ball.
On Friday, September 30, the Architectural League of New York will host the 2016 Beaux Arts Ball, the high point of the social calendar for New York’s architecture and design community. This year’s event, with the theme “Tabula Rasa,” celebrates the creative act of fresh thinking and innovation and the city’s own reinvention, and will be presented at A/D/O, a new design space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Continuing a ongoing collaboration that goes back almost three decades, Pentagram's Michael Bierut and his team have designed the poster and graphics for the Ball, using custom typography that vanishes and reappears to reveal the title in pieces.
The poster for the 1999 Beaux Arts Ball became one of the League’s most enduring images.
The Ball is hosted each year in a different historic and architecturally interesting New York interior. Like this year's theme, the graphics for each Ball begin as a blank slate. There are no formal graphic standards for the event, so each assignment presents Bierut and his team with a fresh challenge.
Responding to the theme and the location, the designers develop a typically typographic mini-identity for the posters, invites and other collateral related to the event. These can range from layered letterforms that create "persistence of vision" effect reminiscent of a photogram for “Light Years,” the 1999 event; to an ornate logo that echoed the ostentatious interiors of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank in Brooklyn, home of the 2012 (“Tender”) and 2014 (“Craft”) Balls; to the pure typography that accompanied the somewhat esoteric concept of “ism” for the 2013 gala, which was held at the 69th Regiment Armory and coincided with the 100th anniversary of the Armory Show.
All proceeds from the Beaux Arts Ball will benefit the League's lecture and exhibitions program. Information and tickets here.
In 2006, the theme was Dot Dot Dot, with appropriately customized typography.
Manufacture, the 2009 Ball, was held at the Old American Can Factory, a redeveloped canning factory in Brooklyn that houses studios for artists and designers.
The 2011 event, Transport, was presented in the atrium of the massive Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park.
The Transport poster was printed on newsprint for an industrial feel.
The 2012 Ball, Tender, was presented at the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, with an identity design that referenced US currency.
The Tender logo printed in patterns on programs.
Pentagram’s Natasha Jen collaborated with SOFTlab on an installation for the 2012 Ball that filled the interior of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank with mylar balloons and a system of hanging tickets that functioned as currency during the event. Photo: Alan Tansey.
Pure typography accompanied the somewhat esoteric concept of “ism,” the theme of the 2013 Ball, which was held at the 69th Regiment Armory and commemorated the centennial of the Armory Show.
The “ism” tote became one of the League’s most coveted pieces of swag.
Craft, the 2014 Ball, returned to the incredibly ornate Williamsburgh Savings Bank, with an identity to match.
The logo was foil-printed in gold on programs.
The 2015 Ball, Threshold, was held at the Knockdown Center, a former doorframe factory turned arts space in Queens.
Threshold programs.
