How to put a big sign on a glass building without blocking the view The New York Times Building Opposite Visitors to the Times pass beneath the ornate Fraktur of the paper’s nameplate, a contrast to the minimalist architecture. Above top Times Square is named after the paper’s turn-of the-century headquarters at 42nd and Broadway. Above bottom Glass globes marked the truck docks at the Times’ former 43rd Street facility. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 155 In 2001, the New York Times hired the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano to design its new headquarters. For nearly 90 years, the Times had operated out of a drab masonry heap on West 43rd Street. It looked like a factory because that’s what it was. The newspapers were printed in its basement and loaded on trucks that departed each morning before dawn to deliver the news to the world. Piano’s design, located three blocks south, was radically different: clad in glass from top to bottom, veiled with a sunscreen of horizontal ceramic rods that evoke the lines of type on the paper’s front page, it is a hymn to digital immateriality and journalistic transparency. But there was a problem. The new building sits within a district that is governed by signage restrictions that are unlike any in the nation. Created to preserve the cacophonous character of Times Square, instead of minimizing the size and quantity of signs, they mandate more, bigger, and flashier signs, signs that by law must be attached to buildings rather than integrated into their facades. But where could a sign go on a building that was glass from top to bottom? As the project’s sign designers, this was our problem to solve. Our solution was to install the paper’s iconic nameplate, 110 feet long, on the building’s Eighth Avenue facade. The sign is made of 959 small teardrop-shaped pieces, each applied precisely to the grid of ceramic rods. The two-inch projections that form the tail of the drops make the sign seem opaque when viewed from below. Viewed straight on—from inside the building—they are nearly invisible. The building is beautiful, but some feared the staff might miss the decades-old patina of their previous home. In response, we made each sign inside the building—all 800 of them from conference rooms to bathrooms—unique. Each features a different image from the Times’ vast photo archive, rendered in an exaggerated dot pattern as an homage to the presses that once rumbled each night beneath the reporters’ offices. 155 30/04/2015 14:0
Like many other designers, my earliest assignments from the New York Times were illustrations for their opinion pages: reductive, telegraphic images meant to tempt readers to engage with complex and sometimes dense ideas. This is high-pressure design at its most exciting: you get the job a few days before presentation, your design must be submitted and approved within 24 hours, and it runs in the paper a day later. This immediate gratification is refreshing compared with the months- (or years-) long process associated with most design projects. Right George Kennan argues against the expansion of NATO. Extending the acronym negates it. Below Invading an oil-rich region as the odometer turns. 156 The New York Times Building 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 156 30/04/2015 14:0
Left top Joyce Carol Oates on the passive- aggressive ironies of anonymity. Left bottom The formerly pacifist left supports armed intervention in Kosovo. Below top The conse- quences of split decisions from the Supreme Court. Lucky for me, their building has eight columns. Below bottom Readers react to the abrupt finale to The Sopranos. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 157 157 30/04/2015 14:0
To create the main sign on the Times’ building, each letter in its logo was divided into narrow horizontal strips, ranging in number from 26 (the i in “Times”) to 161 (the Y in “York”). Pentagram designer Tracey Cameron labored for months with the designers at Renzo Piano Building Workshop and their associated architects, FXFowle, working and reworking the exact pattern. Despite tests, we were never sure it would work. Riding an uptown Eighth Avenue bus, I startled my fellow passengers by clapping when I saw the first letters installed. Above The horizontal rods that hold the sign were designed to mediate heat gain and loss in the glass-clad skyscraper. Left top Each precisely located element has a projecting “beak.” Left below When viewed from below the projections overlap, creating the illusion of opacity. 158 The New York Times Building 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 158 30/04/2015 14:0
Left Viewed from inside, the logo barely blocks the view (of, alas, the Port Authority Bus Terminal). Below The Times’ signature Fraktur is a custom version by master type designer Matthew Carter, rendered here at 10,116 point. Following spread The project manager for the Times, the irrepressible David Thurm, asked for ways to bring the paper’s history to the new location. The result was 800-plus different room and door signs. Next spread At one point, I suggested that we consider a subtle white on-white sign that would disappear at certain times. The paper’s CEO, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., looked at me as if I were crazy and said, “Well, the logo is black on the front page, isn’t it?” 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 159 159 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 160 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 161 30/04/2015 14:0
162 The New York Times Building 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 162 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 163 163 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 164 30/04/2015 14:0
How to make a museum mad Museum of Arts and Design Opposite Our identity for the Museum of Arts and Design generated a new graphic language for its new home. Above left Edward Durell Stone’s building at 2 Columbus Circle was one of New York’s most polarizing pieces of architecture. Above right Brad Cloepfil’s controversial redesign transformed a dark warren of rooms into an interconnected series of light-filled spaces. The Museum of Arts and Design had a long-running identity crisis. Founded in 1956 as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, it renamed itself the American Craft Museum in 1986. In 2002, it changed its name yet again, to the Museum of Arts and Design, MAD for short. Despite the nifty acronym, five years later most people still hadn’t heard of it. But that was about to change. On Columbus Circle, where Broadway, 59th Street, and Central Park West intersect to form an awkward square, stood a peculiar structure. Completed in 1964 and designed by Edward Durell Stone as a museum for the collection of grocery-store heir Huntington Hartford, it was described by critic Ada Louise Huxtable as a “die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops.” Hartford’s museum lasted only five years. The orphaned building reverted to the city. In 2002, it was offered to the Museum of Arts and Design. It needed work. Architect Brad Cloepfil proposed a deft transformation, cutting a continuous slot that snaked through its floors, ceilings, and walls. We were asked to create a new graphic identity to mark the rebirth. Inspired by Cloepfil’s design, I proposed a logo similarly made of a single line. It was one of the best ideas I ever had. There was only one problem: it didn’t work, at least not with the name MAD. Luckily, I had heard that some people thought the acronym was undignified. I seized on this and proposed a name change to A+D, which emphasized the institution’s areas offocus and, conveniently, could be made to work with my idea. I presented this in a series of meetings, armed with ever more elaborate prototypes. But I could not make the sale. If you have a great idea but can’t make it work, it isn’t a great idea. That night, I stared at the site. MAD would face the only complete traffic circle in Manhattan. Squares and circles. I looked at the three letters in the name. Could squares and circles be found there as well? The answer was yes. The simplest geometry solved the problem. No longer necessary were straining machinations and feverish salesmanship. Here was that rare thing: a solution that sold itself. It was approved unanimously at the next meeting. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 165 165 30/04/2015 14:0
Below My second approach abandoned intricate complexity in favor of squares and circles. Once again, simplicity wins. Left top I was mesmerized by Cloepfil’s diagram showing a continuous slot working its way through the building, and used it for my first design concept. Left middle Determined to make a logo that echoed the architecture, and finding it would
not work with the letters in MAD, I proposed an unlikely name change, to A+D. The client didn’t buy it. Left bottom Despite multiple meetings and dozens of handmade prototypes, the client was unconvinced. Deep down, so was I. 166 Museum of Arts and Design 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 166 30/04/2015 14:0
Right As befits an institution dedicated to craft, the logo is a common form that can be rendered in many materials. Its curved tops are also a sly reference to the building’s original “lollipop” columns, visible even after the redesign. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 167 167 30/04/2015 14:0
Below Unlike the original design idea, which required special handling, the new logo was easily adapted to almost any use. Right top The graphic language was perfect for repeat patterns for retail shop packaging. Right middle Making the solid forms of the logo transparent turned it into an effective window, perfect for shopping bags. Right bottom Merchandise sold at MAD celebrates the new identity. Pentagram’s Joe Marianek expanded the three letters of the logo into a whole alphabet: MADface. A T-shirt reading “If you can read this, you are MAD” provides commentary on the custom typeface’s dubious legibility. 168 Museum of Arts and Design 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 168 30/04/2015 14:0
Above By using MADface, we created a brand that merged logo and message. Far left The identity extends into the building both physically and digitally. Left and next spread The identity was ubiquitous in New York City when MAD opened in its new home in September 2008. 169 30/04/2015 14:01 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 16
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 170 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 171 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 172 30/04/2015 14:0
How to judge a book Covers and jackets Opposite This absorbing analysis by the former Jesuit seminarian Jack Miles subjects the Bible to literary criticism and, remarkably, won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for biography. Its three-letter title, naturally too big to be contained, designed itself. Before I took a single design class, I got my education in the aisles of bookstores. In many ways, the design of a book cover is the ultimate challenge. It is inherently, deliciously reductive: whether the book is 48 pages long or 480, it can have only one cover. And that cover, no matter how cerebral the book’s contents or how complex its themes, has a single chance to make an impression. Just like a box of cereal or a can of soup, the designer’s job is to package a product for sale in a competitive environment. This is just as true today, if not more so, as both the sales of books and the books themselves move from the physical world to the digital. My goal is to make the package reflect the contents as directly as possible. I was a bookworm as a child, and I still am today. I read compulsively. Predictably, it has always been hard for me to really enjoy a book with an ugly cover. My most hated were reissues of books newly turned into movies (“Now a Major Motion Picture!”), with covers using portraits of the featured actors to represent fictional characters I would have preferred to cast in my own head. These should really be against the law. My favorites, naturally, were covers with only type, like the paperback editions of The Catcher in the Rye or Brave New World. They projected a sense of mystery and importance, daring me to start reading without a single hint of what kind of world I was about to enter. I learned later that many authors shared my bias; J. D. Salinger, in fact, had a clause in his contracts forbidding images of any sort on his book jackets. It was years before I would have a chance to design a book cover myself. When I finally did, it was no surprise that my best efforts built images from barely more than the contents within: words. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 173 173 30/04/2015 14:0
Right For the cover of this memoir of raising a child with autism, the “voice” evoked by the altered typography suggests the struggle of a mother and daughter to communicate. 174 Covers and jackets 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 174 30/04/2015 14:0
Right The subtle colors of this memoir of growing up in the segregated South reflects at once the book’s warmth, its title, and the elegance of Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s prose. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 175 175 30/04/2015 14:0
My assignment was Nabokov’s beautiful memoir Speak, Memory. My original design filled the box with vintage photographs pinned under a piece of translucent vellum. What was I thinking? Designer Katie Barcelona, preparing the assembly for shipping, suggested (correctly) that the cover was more evocative without the images. Right Art director John Gall, facing the challenge of repackaging Vladimir Nabokov’s books as paperbacks, had an inspired idea: pick a dozen designers, assign each a title, and hand out specimen boxes, the kind that butterfly collectors (like Nabokov was) use to display their finds. Each designer would fill the box with objects that evoked the book’s theme. Gall would get the box photographed, add the author’s name, and that would be the finished cover. 176 Covers and jackets 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 176 30/04/2015 14:0
Right For his wonderful book Lolita: The Story of a Cover Girl, John Bertram and Yuri Leving enlisted 80 designers to imagine covers for Nabokov’s most uncover- able book. Our raw material was a vintage copy of the Mann Act, the 1910 law that prohibits transporting “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” I like to think of the book’s protagonist consulting the law in some small-town library, impulsively tearing the page out, and turning it into a perverse valentine. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 177 177 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 178 30/04/2015 14:0
How to make a mark Logotypes and symbols Opposite IDA Congress, 2012. The IDA Congress is a biennial conference of professional design organi- zations from around the world. What appears at first to be an abstract form is actually Pangaea, the ancient landmass formed by the joining of all the continents: putting the pieces together on a global scale. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 179 The logo is the simplest form of graphic communication. In essence, it is a signature, a way to say, “This is me.” The illiterate’s scrawled X is a kind of logo, just as much as the calligraphic flourishes we associate with Queen Elizabeth or John Hancock. So are the peace sign and the swastika. And so, of course, are the graphic marks that represent Coca-Cola, Nike, McDonald’s, and Apple. The words we use to describe these things can be confusing. Some logos are essentially typographic, like Microsoft’s. I call these logotypes or wordmarks. Others are shapes or images, which I call symbols. Sometimes these can be literal: the symbol for Apple is an apple; the symbol for Target is a target. Sometimes they depict real things but those things may have only an indirect association to what they symbolize. The Lacoste crocodile is derived from founder René Lacoste’s nickname; the three stripes of Adidas began as no more than decoration. And sometimes they’re utterly abstract, like the Chase Bank “beveled bagel,” or the Bass Ale red triangle, which dates to 1777 and is one of the oldest logos in the world. Everyone tends to get overly excited about logos. If you’re a company, communicating with honesty, taste, and intelligence is hard work, requiring constant attention day after day. Designing a logo, on the other hand, is an exercise with a beginning and an end. Clients know what to budget for it, and designers know what to charge for it. So designers and clients often substitute the easy fix of the logo for the subtler challenge of being smart. When we look at a well-known logo, what we perceive isn’t just a word or an image or an abstract form, but a world of associations that have accrued over time. As a result, people forget that a brand-new logo seldom means a thing. It is an empty vessel awaiting the meaning that will be poured into it by history and experience. The best thing a designer can do is make that vessel the right shape for what it’s going to hold. 179 30/04/2015 14:0
Harlequin Enterprises, 2011. Publisher of romantic literature. Success Academy, 2014. A coincidence of arithmetic dictates the design. New York City Economic Development Corporation, 1992. A rising skyline. 21c Hotels, 2005. Art-infused boutique hotels. 180 Logotypes and symbols 00882_Bierut_CS
5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 180 30/04/2015 14:0
MillerCoors, 2008. A merger of two iconic brewers, keeping the focus on the beer. Broadway Books, 1996. The diagonal suggests both an earmarked page and the iconic thoroughfare. Wave Hill, 2002. A cultural center and public gardens in the Bronx. IDEO, 1997. Refinement of the original logo by Paul Rand. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 181 181 30/04/2015 14:0
Gotham Equities, 1992. New York-based real estate developers. 182 Logotypes and symbols 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 182 30/04/2015 14:0
The Fashion Center, 1993. A big button for the Big Apple. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 183 183 30/04/2015 14:0
Council of Fashion Designers of America, 1991. Typography provides the emphasis. St. Petersburg / Clearwater Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2010. Gentle waves for America’s best beaches. Amalgamated Bank, 2014. Founded to serve New York’s garment workers, its woven acronym illustrates its name. Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2007. Subliminal dots for the dot-com world. 184 Logotypes and symbols 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 184 30/04/2015 14:0
How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things Page 6
