Pentagram has designed a special issue of Drexel Magazine on the occasion of Drexel University’s 125th anniversary. The commemorative, collector’s edition also debuts Pentagram’s redesign of the university’s alumni magazine. Pentagram previously developed Drexel’s award-winning research magazine, EXEL, and have designed and produced five editions of the annual publication to date.
Drexel University, founded by financier and philanthropist Anthony J. Drexel in 1891, has evolved over the years into a top-notch, highly ranked research institution. When A.J. Drexel first established the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in downtown Philadelphia he envisioned an institution of higher learning uniquely suited to the needs of a rapidly growing industrial society and of the young men and women seeking their place in it—core values that continue to guide the university in the modern era. Drexel’s emphasis on career preparation was the foundation for the university's co-operative education program. Introduced at Drexel in 1919 as one of the first models of its kind, the program has become integral to Drexel’s educational experience. Through it, students alternate periods of study with full-time professional employment, providing valuable experience and career opportunities.
This latest project gave the design team the opportunity to update the alumni magazine so that it is more on brand. The new cover logo features a variation of Drexel’s institutional wordmark and the reworked interior page designs include the use of Miller for headlines and body text.
For Drexel Magazine’s anniversary edition, the magazine’s editor, Sonja Sherwood, wanted a cover image that referenced both Drexel’s rich past and its contemporary identity. The redesign team landed on the idea of featuring a tintype of the campus’s iconic dragon statue–positioning his snarling head on the front cover and his long, spiny tail on the back. Tintyping, in which a negative is exposed on the surface of a thin iron plate coated with a collodion emulsion, is an outdated 19th-century photographic process that was popular during A.J. Drexel’s time. Amanda Tinker, an assistant teaching professor in Drexel’s photography program and an expert in historical photo processes, was enlisted to create the tintypes from Jeff Fusco’s original photographs of the dragon statue.
The bulk of the issue, a package of 48 pages, is devoted to telling the colorful story of Drexel’s 125 years of existence through a lively, graphic layout built around 125 historical facts, people, programs and moments that have made Drexel the unique place it is today. The rambling anniversary package is permeated with the occasional standalone story and infographics including a timeline composed in the shape of the Drexel dragon, a map showing the historical progression of the physical campus, and a diagram called “Six Degrees of A.J. Drexel” that connects the university’s namesake to actor and fellow Philadelphian Kevin Bacon—twice.
An added bonus is a tipped-in card with a perforated, removable facsimile of A.J. Drexel’s bushy, exuberant mustache. The magazine encouraged its readers to post selfies wearing Drexel’s signature facial hair on social media.
