00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 241 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 242 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 243 30/04/2015 14:0
Above right The signs have been engineered to withstand collision, vandalism, and tough New York winters. Left The wayfinding maps, with their color scheme adjusted for 24-hour artificial light, have been installed in all of New York’s subway stations. Above left We believe that signs should be digital only when they have to be. The kiosks that support New York’s Select Bus Service feature real-time schedule information. Opposite The structures that house the maps were designed to echo New York’s modernist architecture. 244 New York City Department of Transportation 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 244 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 245 245 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 246 30/04/2015 14:0
How to investigate a murder A Wilderness of Error Opposite and above The cover and dust jacket of A Wilderness of Error, an investigation of the murder of a wife and two children, depict, respec- tively, the floor plan of the MacDonald family home, and the pattern of blood types that investigators found on the scene the morning after the murders. Unusually, each of the four family members had a different blood type. This made the crime no easier to solve. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 247 Filmmaker Errol Morris is obsessed with truth. All of his films have at their centers people who know the truth, don’t want to know the truth, want to stop other people from learning the truth, or want to uncover the truth. As a former private investigator, Morris knows well how physical evidence can support or challenge conflicting testimony. So often the inanimate objects in his movies acquire an outsized significance: documents, photographs, an umbrella, a teacup. Morris’s breakthrough in 1988, The Thin Blue Line, used interviews and reenactments to investigate the colliding stories behind an obscure shooting of a police officer in Dallas. The mesmerizing film exonerated a man on death row who had been unjustly convicted of the crime. Brilliant and inexhaustible, Errol Morris also writes books. In 2012, he decided to examine another decades-old crime, this one anything but obscure. On February 17, 1970, army physician Jeffrey MacDonald’s wife and children were brutally murdered in their home in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Although MacDonald maintained that they were killed by intruders, he was convicted of the crime. He has been in prison since 1982, consistently maintaining his innocence. Since then, the case has been the subject of several previous books as well as two television movies. Morris was convinced there was more to be discovered. The book he wrote about the case, A Wilderness of Error, is a study in black and white of a case that is anything but. For the book’s design, we decided to avoid the clichés of true-crime books. Instead, we focused on the eerie collection of physical evidence that survived from that evening: a coffee table, a flower pot, a child’s doll, a rocking horse, a pajama top. Mute witnesses to a crime that has defied resolution, they have been examined and reexamined so many times they have acquired an iconic status to people who know the case. We reduced each of them to a simple black-and-white line drawing. Morris realized that their stark, deadpan quality could provide the book’s central visual motif; we ended up doing nearly fifty of them. The cover, the floor plan of the tiny MacDonald apartment, represents the claustrophobic “wilderness” where this mystery unfolded, and where, somewhere, the truth resides. 247 30/04/2015 14:0
The MacDonald case was full of these kinds of quotidian objects elevated to iconic status, each implicated in a horrific crime. Morris encouraged us to use stark images of these objects to structure the book and organize its complex themes of truth and justice. Pentagram’s Yve Ludwig led the design of the book and Niko Skourtis organized the team that created the drawings. Right and next spread Errol Morris is the recipient of an Academy Award for The Fog of War and a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” The Thin Blue Line, my first exposure to his work, was like no other movie I had ever seen. The blunt, awkward interviews of criminals, cops, lawyers, and witnesses; the surreal reenactments illustrating a crime that no one described the same way; the peculiar digressions; the haunting Philip Glass score: it all added up to a revolution in documentary filmmaking. By now I have seen it many times. My favorite moment is a staged sequence where a choco- late milkshake flies through the air in slow motion, landing with a plop on the ground, a banal punctu- ation to a nightmarish crime. 248 A Wilderness of Error 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 248 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 249 249 30/04/2015 14:0
250 A Wilderness of Error 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 250 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 251 251 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 252 30/04/2015 14:0
How to be who you are Mohawk Fine Papers Opposite The company’s new identity introduces a dynamic initial letter that is meant to work at every size and in every medium, changing to suit the occasion while retaining its basic geometry. Above Throughout the 20th century, Mohawk was represented by various renditions of a Mohawk Indian tribesman, always dignified but increasingly anachronistic. Starting in the early 1990s, I began working with Mohawk’s marketing head Laura Shore to craft an image for the company that matched its reality. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 253 Once, a logo was meant to last forever. Some still do, and should. But at a time when organizations must change rapidly to meet new challenges or risk oblivion, what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. A company’s identity must be authentic and consistent, but never frozen in time. Founded in 1931 in upstate New York at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, Mohawk Fine Papers has been owned by the O’Connor family for three generations. In a digital world, papermaking remains a frankly industrial process: anyone who has toured a paper mill and seen a giant vat of swirling pulp transformed into smooth stacks of paper is unlikely to forget it. Among practitioners of this ancient art, few paper companies have been as innovative as Mohawk. From dominating the world of print with textured and colored papers in the 1940s and 1950s, to inventing processes to ensure good offset (and later digital) reproduction in the 1980s and 1990s, to becoming the first paper company in America to offset carbon emissions with wind-farm credits, this little company has met each challenge with imagination and aplomb. Marketing paper is complicated. For years, companies like Mohawk sold it to distributors, who in turn sold it to printers, who placed orders based on the specifications of designers and art directors. The 21st century added more complexity. Large-scale orders for corporate literature like annual reports evaporated as companies went online. In the meantime, small-batch and do-it-yourself operations opened markets directly to consumers. In response, we’ve redesigned the brand identity of Mohawk three times, or once every ten years. The newest identity—centered on a stylized letter M that can take many different forms—positions the company at the center of the digital world, while confirming its commitment to craft and connectivity. The best graphic identity will fail if it doesn’t connect with the authentic core of the organization it represents. Dolly Parton’s advice to young singers is also the best branding philosophy I’ve ever heard: “Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.” How lucky to have a client who knows who they are. 253 30/04/2015 14:0
Right The symbol can be reproduced as a line drawing as well as in a wide variety of monochromatic and multicolor combinations. Above The drawing of the M is meant to simultaneously evoke four things: rolls of uncut paper on the mill floor, the mechanics of offset printing, digital circuitry, and the idea of connection. 254 Mohawk Fine Papers 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 254 30/04/2015 14:0
Above A simple black-on-craft paper pattern identifies Mohawk’s rugged shipping boxes. Left The forms of the M symbol can be rearranged to form a wide variety of symbols, from exclamation marks to arithmetic notation. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 255 255 30/04/2015 14:0
Left With the laun
ch of the identity, we introduced a new theme, “What will you make today?” This aligned Mohawk’s products with the process of communicating ideas and transforming them into reality. Opposite Vivid wrapping papers help make Mohawk products stand out in stores and warehouses. Right top The com- pany’s new sales literature advances the theme and expands the visual identity. Right bottom Mohawk’s delivery trucks are a common sight in upstate New York. 256 Mohawk Fine Papers 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 256 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 257 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 258 30/04/2015 14:0
How to get the passion back American Institute of Architects Opposite Our animated logo for the new AIA emphasizes the collective power that supports each individual member. Above The AIA’s original logo was meant to convey authority and reinforce the idea of architecture as a protected guild. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 259 Founded in 1857, with more than 80,000 members today, the American Institute of Architects is the oldest and largest design organization in the United States. The 13 original members, bearded white men all, would not recognize the profession as it approaches its 160th birthday. In recent years the AIA has faced unprecedented challenges: the global economic downturn, the revolutionary effect of technology, an ever-more-diverse potential membership base. In response, the organization, led by the deliberate and determined Robert Ivy, undertook a sweeping repositioning process. We were asked to help imagine what this new AIA might look like. Reinventing an organization this old and this big is a difficult and potentially traumatic process. As is often the case, part of the challenge was figuring out exactly what the challenge was. The AIA hoped to improve the general public’s opinion of architects. But that wasn’t really the problem: as we learned from an analysis conducted by my colleague Arthur Cohen, people like architects. The problem was that architects didn’t like architects. Frequently demoralized by the multiple stresses on their profession, many could only dimly recall the passion that led them into architecture in the first place. They looked to the AIA for education, affirmation, and support. We wanted to restore the passion as well. Our work, then, had multiple audiences, but at the center sat the architects, who inevitably were the best advocates for their own value. We began to unify the communications issued by AIA and its network of chapters and components, creating a new tone of voice suited to their new initiatives. We invented a proprietary typeface based on the simple Doric column-like character of the capital I that sits at the center of their acronym. And I got personal with a heartfelt 193-word manifesto that addressed what motivates individual designers, and why we’re all stronger together. The first time it was presented at an AIA board meeting, a few members confessed they were moved to tears. The passion was back. 259 30/04/2015 14:0
Below An ad conceived by our colleagues at LaPlaca Cohen focuses not on architecture but on the people that architecture serves. Opposite A new typeface, AIArchitype, unifies the organization’s communica tions. Drawn by Jeremy Mickel, it is based loosely on a post-and-lintel system, with strong verticals supporting narrower horizontals. 260 American Institute of Architects 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 260 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 261 261 30/04/2015 14:0
Next spread We conducted months of research on what motivated architects and what they wanted from their professional organization, and reduced it to a simple 200-word manifesto. Right and opposite The AIA’s annual convention in 2014 was held in Chicago, America’s greatest architectural city. It was a perfect place to launch the organization’s new voice. Pentagram’s Hamish Smyth worked with the AIA’s in-house marketing team on a coordinated program, all anchored by an energetic wordmark that literally embedded the AIA into the destination. Ads and merchandise paraphrase a famous quote by Chicago’s master planner Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s souls.” 262 American Institute of Architects 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 262 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 263 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 264 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 265 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 266 30/04/2015 14:0
How to make news Charlie Rose Opposite The graphic language of the Charlie Rose show is based on the geometry of squares and circles, the graphic analogue to the program’s iconic set: a round table in a featureless black back- ground. With its cheesy effects, kitschy animation, and rotten typography, much of the design you see on television looks like nothing more than animated junk mail. And is anything worse than news shows? The inescapable din of 24-hour cable has provoked its own visual corollary, a relentless tsunami of on-screen graphics that seem calculated to obfuscate rather than inform. Against this hopelessly cluttered environment, the public television show hosted by journalist Charlie Rose is an oasis of confident, understated clarity. Since 1991, Rose has conducted interviews in a setting of striking asceticism: a round wooden table in a featureless black void. The guests at that table have ranged from presidents and prime ministers to actors and authors. Rose’s courtly manner, tinged with a laconic accent from his North Carolina upbringing, belies his ability to ask probing questions that provoke surprising responses. His hundreds of recorded interviews, spanning three decades, provide an unmatched record of eyewitness accounts of the events that have changed our world. There was one weak spot: the graphics, which had barely evolved beyond their 1990s roots. As a faithful viewer, I have seldom been as happy to get a call asking if we could help. I knew immediately we could state the challenge in a single question: what is the graphic corollary to the round wooden table? Our solution was just as direct. Using a condensed typeface that suggested the urgency of classic newspaper headlines, we set the host’s name on two lines. They formed a perfect square, an ideal counterpart to the tabletop’s circle. The combination of squares and circles generated a modular system that allowed us to organize everything from advertising layouts to web pages. No 3-D effects, no shiny metallic finishes. A custom set of quotation marks, again built from the geometry of circles and squares, completed the graphic package. It emphasized what Charlie Rose is all about: conversation, spontaneous and unvarnished, the essence of journalism and the key to understanding an increasingly complex world. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 267 267 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 268 30/04/2015 14:0
Left Almost every Charlie Rose show generates memorable quotes, a testimony to his skill as an interviewer. The quotes are transformed into miniature posters that can be used to encourage viewers to tune in. Opposite To create a signature typographic voice for Charlie Rose, Pentagram designer Jessica Svendsen adapted an underused font from the mid-1950s, Schmalfette Grotesk. It evokes the straightforward headlines of print journalism, and eschews typical television tricks like 3-D shadows and shiny highlights. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 269 269 30/04/2015 14:0
Above and opposite The redesigned Charlie Rose website offers a searchable archive of the show’s vast repository of interviews. These conceptual designs demonstrate how the modular system could be adapted for digital interactivity. 270 Charlie Rose 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 270 30/04/2015 14:0
00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 271 271 30/04/2015 14:0
Right At the show’s inception in 1991, Rose’s viewers had one option: to tune in to its nightly broadcast or miss it altogether. Today, his audience can decide for themselves when, where, what, and how they want to watch. Opposite Despite its worldwide following, the Charlie Rose show remains very much a product of New York, and its graphics intentionally evoke the city’s frenetic activity. 272 Charlie Rose 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 272 30/04/2015 14:0
How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things Page 9