How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things

by Michael Bierut

  Cheltenham, designed by Bertram Goodhue in 1896. Classic without being fussy, available in multiple weights and versions, it was used on everything from painted signs to cut metal details to a fence that enclosed a 40-foot live oak at the community’s entrance. Below Towns don’t have logos, but they do have seals. The Celebration seal created by Pentagram Associate Tracey Cameron was meant to invoke the quintessential American small town. It was also made into a wristwatch on which, once a minute, the dog overtakes the girl cyclist (see opposite, bottom right). Right and opposite Our graphics were designed to be approved by some of the world’s best architects, including Robert A. M. Stern, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Cesar Pelli, Michael Graves, and Philip Johnson. It was a bit of luck that our recommen dation for the town’s official typeface was created by an architect: 54 Celebration, Florida 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 54 30/04/2015 14:0

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  Next spread Ironically, the town that celebrates Main Street values has no Main Street itself. (There was already another street with that name in Osceola County.) Instead, the central thoroughfare is called Celebration Avenue. Opposite top Our graphics included the design of a fountain in the heart of Celebration’s shopping district, with compass points connecting the community to the rest of the world. Opposite bottom Overlaying the consistency of the town’s infrastructure were the signs for the town’s retailers. Whereas street signs and manhole covers used a consistent visual language, store signs explored the history of American vernacular signage, from neon to woodcarving to mosaic tile. Right top The town’s movie theater, a stylish contemporary take on American Moderne by Cesar Pelli, is a landmark that bears the town’s name on its twin masts. Right bottom Designing the graphics for Celebration’s public golf club was much harder than designing the town seal. It took me some time to realize why: none of our clients were Schwinn-riding, ponytailed girls, but most of them were enthusiastic golfers. The silhouette on the golf club sign was refined endlessly as various executives demonstrated their swings in client meetings. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 57 57 30/04/2015 14:0

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  How to work for free Parallax Theater Opposite Victor D’Altorio’s theater company was called Parallax. I never asked him what the name meant, and he never asked me why the logo looked the way it did. Victor D’Altorio was the best actor in my high school. He was in every play our school mounted, and if not in the starring role, at least in the hammiest one: Captain Hook in Peter Pan, Boris Kolenkhov in You Can’t Take It with You, Malvolio in Twelfth Night. I did the posters. After college, he arrived in New York to look for work as an actor as I was just starting out as a designer. Before long, I got a call. “Hey, Mike?” he asked. (Only my family and oldest friends still call me Mike.) “We’re putting on a show. Could you do the poster?” I said, sure. He told me they didn’t have much money. I said, don’t worry about that. Victor would never hit the big time as an actor. But he became a beloved teacher and a sometime director, first in New York, then Chicago, and ultimately Los Angeles. And I designed every one of his posters for free. The Internet is filled with designer rants about the corrosive evils offree work. I love working for free, especially under the unspoken terms that governed the relationship I had with Victor. First, the work was fun. Victor would explain what the play was about in two sentences, and would send me the text that had to go on the poster. The explanation was always vivid and inspiring, and the text was always complete and free of typographical errors. Second, after receiving my design, Victor would permit himself a single question: “How can I thank you?” Finally, he never promised me exposure to movie stars on opening night or high-paying jobs down the road. I think as an actor, he understood what so many clients don’t: that for a creative person, the real reward is to simply do the work. Getting a “Hey, Mike?” call from Victor meant I’d have one more chance to do my best. Sadly, I won’t get that call again. Victor died, too young, in 2009. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 61 61 30/04/2015 14:0

  Above The Wall of Water is a farce about four female roommates living in a small apartment with a single bathroom who gradually drive each other crazy. The challenge was to make the visual connec- tion between neurosis and indoor plumbing. 62 Above Wallace Shawn’s play Marie and Bruce is one of the funniest, darkest, and most scatological portraits of a dysfunctional relationship ever put on stage. For many years, this poster hung in one of Pentagram’s bathrooms. Parallax Theater 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 62 30/04/2015 14:0

  Above America’s obsession with consumption meets a delicate whisper of mutilation in Edward Albee’s classic, and ironically titled, play The American Dream. Above For some reason, many of Victor’s productions seemed to revolve around broken or mutually abusive relationships, including Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love. As with most Parallax productions, I took pleasure in contrasting the name of the play with the grim brutality suggested by the illustrations. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 63 63 30/04/2015 14:0

  Right At the center of this staged adaptation of Robert Coover’s short story is a teenaged girl who serves as a figure upon which multiple fantasies, many of them erotic, are projected. 64 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 64 30/04/2015 14:0

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  How to raise a billion dollars Princeton University Opposite For the theme of its biggest fundraising effort to date, Princeton looked to the words of its alma mater. “With One Accord” was the result. Above At the campaign launch, giant banners in the school colors of orange and black flanked the doors to Nassau Hall, the oldest building on campus and the song’s subject. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 67 One day, after I had been at Pentagram a few years, I got a call from a former client, Jody Friedman. She had just gotten a new job doing something called “development communications” at her alma mater, Princeton. She said they were about to launch a capital campaign and asked if I could help. I didn’t know what development communications were, I didn’t know what a capital campaign was, and I had never set foot on the campus of Princeton University. Jody patiently explained to me that this was all basically about fundraising. I got uneasier. As someone who had spent his career working like a plumber (my customer needed something done, I figured out how much it would cost, the customer agreed, I did the work, the customer paid), the idea of making money by simply asking for it was absolutely foreign. Secretly, I was scared of venturing into unknown territory, and preemptively intimidated by the very smart, very well-educated people I was sure to encounter. I tried to back out, but Jody was persistent. I agreed, and learned an obvious lesson: your best chance to grow is to do something you don’t know how to do. My clients at Princeton were wonderful guides, and initiated me in the mysterious world of university fundraising. We devised a theme and a graphic treatment. I created some innovative pieces of communication not because I was daring or imaginative, but simply because I didn’t actually know how such things were usually done. Not being familiar with the ritualized ways of asking for money, I simply portrayed the university in a way that its alumni would recognize as authentic, and asked for their support. They responded. It helped that the economy was booming. The campaign’s goal was $750,000; it raised $1.2 billion. Graphic design, where form is so dependent on content, is a perfect way to learn about the world. My projects have put me at laboratory benches with microbiologists and in locker rooms with professional football players. I design best when I’m interested in the subject matter. As a result, I’ve learned to be as interested in as many things as possible. 67 30/04/2015 14:0

  Above A small book d
esigned by Pentagram’s Lisa Cerveny hinted at the campaign to come by finding number ones on and around campus, from cornerstones to street signs. Above A graphic program devised by Princeton educated designer Bill Drenttel with his partner Stephen Doyle had designated Baskerville as the school’s typeface. 68 Princeton University 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 68 30/04/2015 14:0

  support the faculty. Learning traced a day in the life offive students and made the case for scholarships. Building interviewed the distinguished architects who were working on campus and built support for new facilities. Left top, middle, and bottom Three small paperbacks, modestly printed in black and white, replaced the ponderous tomes that were then the default way to raise money for schools in the early 1990s. Teaching focused on beloved professors on campus and raised money to Above Launch events for the campaign around the country turned the graphic identity into celebratory pageantry. A huge, three- dimensional “ONE” traveled with the school’s vocal groups and served as instant photo opportunities for proud alumni. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 69 69 30/04/2015 14:0

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  How to win a close game New York Jets Opposite The New York Jets are the only organization in the world with graphic guidelines bound in Astroturf. Above The original logo is a not-very-good piece of commercial art from the early 1960s. Could it be transformed while remaining unchanged? 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 71 In 2001, we got a call from Jay Cross, then president of the New York Jets. Probably the only person in sports management with degrees in both architecture and nuclear engineering, Cross had an assignment with a catch. The assignment was to rebrand the team. The catch? We couldn’t touch the logo. The New York Jets are a media-age invention. Founded in 1959 as the New York Titans, the team changed its name and logo in 1963. The Jets had one indelible moment of glory six years later when the glamorous quarterback Joe Namath led them to an upset victory in Super Bowl III. Since then, the team has been a reliable source of heartbreak to its loyal fans, with a rotating cast of colorful players and outspoken coaches who could never quite regain the heights attained in 1969. Probably no genre of graphic design is more fraught with emotion than the design of identities for sports teams. If you change a logo for a bank, no one will notice. If you change a logo for a football team, you will get hate mail. The logo that Namath and his teammates wore to the Super Bowl was thought to have totemic power. (Identity design is one of the few professions in which magical thinking qualifies as a business strategy.) As we undertook our work, it was this original logo, now sacrosanct, drawn by an anonymous artist four decades ago, that we were stuck with. This is what designers call a “cat’s breakfast”: the name of the team in one typeface, superimposed upon the initials NY in another typeface, a tiny football underneath, all placed on another football shape. We made it our starting point. It turned out that for all its messiness, the logo was a source of endless inspiration. The four letters in the team name could be extrapolated into a proprietary alphabet. The letters NY, superimposed on the football shape, became an immediately identifiable alternate logo. Even the tiny football turned out to be a character we could bring to life. Combined with an expanded color range and a few other graphic devices, the logo provided the Jets with a whole new identity, one that is still in use more than a dozen years later. 71 30/04/2015 14:0

  Printed standards manuals, once ubiquitous, have been largely replaced by online tools. Yet a physical document can convey a level of authority that a website cannot, particularly if it’s made simple and memorable. The book that introduced the new graphic identity for the Jets, bound with hard-to-ignore artificial turf, was meant to provide both instruction and inspiration. Twenty years later, in an attempt to evoke the glory of the Namath years, coach Bill Parcells reinstated the original logo. It was the unlikely source of the whole brand system. Below The Jets had already updated their logo once before, introducing an aerodynamic version, not shown here, in 1978. The fans viewed it with suspicion if not outright distaste. 72 New York Jets 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 72 30/04/2015 14:0

  Below Working with the letters J, E, T, and S, type designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones created a complete typeface. It exists in only one form: extra heavy super italic. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 73 73 30/04/2015 14:0

  Right The new typeface, Jets Bold, made any word look intimidating. Jonathan and Tobias used to joke that it would be perfect for Michael Bay movie posters. 74 New York Jets 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 74 30/04/2015 14:0

  Next spread, top right Designer Brett Traylor discovered a fierce linesman hidden in the tiny football within the logo, and a new mascot, “Gameface,” was born. Next spread, bottom right The brand system, derived as it is from a common source, is designed to permit maximum variety while remaining close to the team. Next spread, top left Fans are as obsessed with color as they are with logos. We very carefully introduced several comple- mentary colors to the green and-white Jets palette. Next spread, bottom left Unlike that of their crosstown rivals, the New York Giants, the Jets logo failed to highlight the team’s highly marketable hometown. We remedied this with an alternate logo that put the initials NY, set in Jets Bold, inside the football shape created by the logo. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 75 75 30/04/2015 14:0

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  Right A signature part of the Jets brand is aural: the chant “J! E! T! S! JETS! JETS! JETS!” that is heard as a rallying cry at every game. Its graphic interpretation became still another element in the Jets brand identity. 78 New York Jets 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 78 30/04/2015 14:0

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  How to be good The Good Diner Opposite The Good Diner’s name and logo delineated the restaurant’s caffeine-fueled value system. Above Thanks to a photogenic design, this restaurant was briefly one of the most widely published greasy spoon joints in the world. When visitors would call our office asking if tours were available, Jim Biber would respond, “It’s open 24 hours and takes no reservations. It’s a diner.” Sheldon Werdiger and Evan Carzis were smart architects. The recession of the late 1980s had brought building in New York to a halt. So they decided to open a diner. They didn’t want it to be fancy, they explained to us. Not a retro, Fabulous Fifties place. Not a hip, reverse chic place. Just a plain diner where you could get two eggs, bacon, and toast for $4.99. The location was the corner of Eleventh Avenue and 42nd Street. Sheldon and Evan wanted to cast a wide net: “We’ll get tourists on their way to the Circle Line, UPS drivers on their way to the morning shift, club kids on their way home after last call.” This place had to appeal to all of them. Our challenge was to deliver populist design, short-order style on a no-design budget, starting with the name. I suggested Jersey Luncheonette, and a logo with the state’s silhouette on a plate like a piece of veal scaloppine. That didn’t fly. Nor did they like Wild West Diner, or Sunset Café, or The Last Stop. Too clever. Finally I suggested The Good Diner. Not great, not fantastic, just…good. For the logo, our partner Woody Pirtle put a halo on a coffee cup. We installed the logo in hand-cut linoleum at the front door. My partner Jim Biber, who had created some of Manhattan’s best restaurants, explained that diners weren’t really designed as much as ordered from catalogs. So he ordered one of everything, upholstering the booths and the counter seats with every color available. With no art budget, we decorated the walls with photocopied images of kitchen implements. Light shades shaped like milkshake containers and a single bespoke railing were the only concessions to custom manufacturing. As is often the case, we took part of our design fees in trade for food. Eating our third helping of $4.99 bacon and eggs in a week, Jim and I realized we would be dead from cholesterol poisoning before we ever made our money back. 00
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