The Yale School of Architecture presented the symposium “George Nelson—Designs for Living: American Mid-Century Design and Its Legacy Today”, about the legendary product designer and his lasting influence on contemporary design. The event coincides with the exhibition George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher, opening this week at Yale.
For the symposium, Pentagram has created a poster that translates the form of Nelson’s iconic Ball Clock (1948) into the color palette of all Pentagram's posters for Yale—black and white—with the clock's hands appearing in gray. Nelson's twelve-letter name, set in Poster Bodoni Italic, fills the clock's hours.
Pentagram has a long association with George Nelson. When Pentagram co-founder Colin Forbes first moved to New York in the late seventies to establish an office there, he shared space with Nelson, and the two discussed the possibility of Nelson joining the Pentagram partnership. The relationship was never made formal, although there are news releases that have survived from the period that refer to Nelson as a Pentagram partner. Forbes designed the jacket for Nelson's classic 1978 book George Nelson On Design, the first project produced by Pentagram New York.
