New at Pentagram
New Work: ‘Mannahatta/Manhattan’
What was Manhattan like 400 years ago, before the first settlers arrived? Designed by Abbott Miller, the new exhibition Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City at the Museum of the City of New York reconstructs the ecology of the small wooded island originally known as Mannahatta (“island of many hills” as the Lenape Indians called it) before it became one of the most densely built places on earth. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society and is based on the Mannahatta Project, scientist Eric W. Sanderson’s decade-long research of the ecological history of the island, its geological features, as well as its flora and fauna. The exhibition has been mounted as part of the museum’s celebration of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Henry Hudson in Mannahatta (September 12, 1609) and is on view through October 12.
Abbott Miller also designed Sanderson’s book about the project, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, and like the book, the exhibition presents stunning visualizations of pre-settlement Manhattan rendered by Markley Boyer. Miller’s design of the exhibition highlights these visualizations to transport visitors to a Manhattan quite unlike the one outside the museum walls.
Michael Gericke Honored by the American Institute of Architects
Michael Gericke has been named the recipient of the Harry B. Rutkins Award for his design, service and professional contributions to the AIA and its New York Chapter’s activities.
Michael has collaborated with the AIA since 1994. His work includes the Center for Architecture’s iconic key symbol, posters, and graphics for many of the New York Chapter’s publications, initiatives and events.
Honorees for other AIA New York awards at this year’s annual meeting included Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Ada Louise Huxtable, Robert Yaro, Susan Szenasy, Jerilyn Perine, David Resnick and Chris Ward.
A sampling of Michael’s design for the AIA follows after the jump.
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Pentagram Papers 39: SIGNS
We have all seen the homeless on street corners holding hand-scrawled signs. Their messages are desperate, heartbreaking, and at times, even humorous. These naked forms of self-expression have unintentionally become some of the most basic, raw and compelling examples of graphic communication in our society today. The 39th edition of our privately published Pentagram Papers series was designed by DJ Stout. It features signs from the personal collection of the legendary musician and writer Joe Ely and photographed by Randal Ford. These images are combined with a series of large-format portraits of the homeless by Austin-based photographer Michael O’Brien, who worked with Alan Graham, president of Austin’s Mobile Loaves & Fishes, and Brother Duane Severance, a pastor to the street people. Ely wrote the book’s foreword.
We have adapted the contents of the paper online here:
Our Austin office recently launched the publication of SIGNS with a benefit that raised $5000 to help feed the homeless. We hope that you find Ely’s essay and the photographs of O’Brien and Ford as moving as we do and we encourage you to join us in supporting one of the charities listed here or a local one of your choice.
Paula Scher’s Posters Exhibited in Trieste
A selection of posters designed by Paula Scher will be shown in a joint exhibition with the designer and illustrator Paul Cox opening this week in Trieste, Italy. Scher and Cox were both participants in a conference presented last month by the Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche di Urbino, which is presenting the new exhibition in collaboration with AGI. The exhibition opens this Friday, 26 June and remains on view through July 24 at Tassinari/Vetta, 16, via Gioacchino Rossini, Trieste.
Where There’s Smoke…
Today President Obama signed new legislation that will heavily restrict the nicotine content and marketing of cigarettes, including the requirement that colorful ads and displays be replaced with black-and-white-only text. For a piece in its Sunday Perspectives section, the St. Petersburg Times asked DJ Stout what cigarette manufacturers like Marlboro might do to follow the new marketing rules. (The full article is print only; we’ve posted it here.) Stout suggests that to comply with the crackdown, tobacco companies should embrace the restrictions and make cigarettes look truly dangerous. This, of course, will still appeal to a core group of smokers.
Peter Gabriel Comes Face to Face at Pentagram
Peter Gabriel gives a wonderful namecheck to Pentagram and Harry Pearce in his latest monthly video diary, citing the photographic faces on display in the front conference room of our London office. In his comments Gabriel attributes the authorship of the photos to a partner, but they were actually created by Jean Edouard Robert, who worked in the London office on Pentagram Papers 4: Face to Face, which was designed by John McConnell and published in 1977. Gabriel is the Chairman and Co-founder of the human rights organization Witness and saw the “Face to Face” prints during a Witness brainstorming with Harry Pearce, who has designed for Witness for the past thirteen years.
More faces after the jump.
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Awards: 365: AIGA Annual Design Competition 30
Each year the long, cold winter of competition submissions pays off (hopefully) with a little winning in the warmer months. This year our US offices have had a lucky 13 projects selected in the 365: AIGA Annual Design Competition 30, announced today.
Pentagram has winners in all four categories, or “channels,” of 365. In Branding, our selections include the identities for the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), Bobby’s Burger Palace and The Oak Room, all designed by Michael Bierut; the identity for OLIN, designed by Abbott Miller; and the refresh of The Public Theater identity, designed by Paula Scher. Scher’s 2008 Shakespeare in the Park campaign was honored in the Promoting channel, as were Michael Bierut’s viewbook for Yale College and our very own Pentagram Papers 39: Signs, designed by DJ Stout, and holiday book, A Number of Numbers, designed by Michael Gericke. Abbott Miller’s False Start issue of 2wice was selected in the Entertaining category, and Kit Hinrich’s Long May She Wave: A Graphic History of the American Flag exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art was honored in Informing.
Our winners in the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers section of the competition are Writings on Architecture, the collection of essays by Paul Rudolph, designed by Michael Bierut; and Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, the exhibition catalogue for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, designed by Abbott Miller.
The winning projects will be published in the annual AIGA: 365 Year in Design, out later this year.
New Work: Shakespeare in the Park
New York City streets are once again dressed in a new campaign for Shakespeare in the Park, the annual free performances presented by The Public Theater at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. This year’s plays include a raucous production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night starring Anne Hathaway, opening tonight, and Euripides’s tragedy The Bacchae, with a score by Philip Glass, coming in August.
As usual the two plays are largely unrelated, but one thing they have in common this year is transvestism: lead characters in both plays don drag, hence the campaign tagline “Cross-Dressing in the Park.” The posters feature a Greek sculpture accessorized with a Shakespearean rose and mustachioed with a fine calligraphic line. Designed by Paula Scher and Lisa Kitschenberg, the campaign uses elements of the Public’s refreshed identity and complements our campaign for last summer’s productions of Hamlet and Hair.
More from the campaign after the jump.
New Work: Montpelier Plantation
Justus Oehler and his team in Berlin have designed the visual identity for Montpelier Plantation, a luxury hotel on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean. The small, family-run hotel is a meticulously restored 18th-century sugar plantation that has been converted into a Relais & Chateaux boutique hotel. The plantation is set in a sixty-acre estate 750 feet up in the hills of Nevis and features 19 rooms with sea views, a private beach and a restaurant in a 300-year-old converted sugar mill.
The logotype is simple and elegant, set in Garamond Italic with the letters t and p connected to create a ligature. For the colour we chose a warm brown which is reminiscent of the colour of brown sugar, combined with a bright green lavender.
Preview: The Cooper Union
Abbott Miller and his team are currently completing the signage program for The Cooper Union’s stunning new academic building designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis. Our signage on the building’s canopy, now installed, features optically extruded lettering that appears “correct” when seen in strict elevation, but distorts as the profile of the letter is dragged backwards in space. The building is set to open in September and is previewed today in The New York Times.
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