Michael Bierut, 2006 AIGA Medalist

On Wednesday, 25 October, Michael Bierut was awarded the AIGA Medal, the graphic design industry’s highest honor. The presentation was made at this year’s Design Legends Gala, held at Pier 60 at Chelsea Piers in New York.

Update: Unbeige covers the medalists, the event, and the stars. Fast Company cites Paula Scher’s introduction for Michael as a highlight.

Following the jump, Paula’s remarks for Michael.

Michael Bierut
2006 AIGA Medalist

I am honored and pleased to introduce my partner and dear friend, Michael Bierut, for our industry’s highest honor.

Now, every one of you know who Michael Bierut is, but you probably think of him differently depending on how old you are.

If you’re over 60, you probably remember him as the funny kid who worked for Massimo and made those terrific typographic posters for the Architectural League.

If you’re in your 40s, you probably know him as a Pentagram Partner, devoted AIGA president, a designer of important identities like United Airlines or BAM. Or maybe you think of his beautiful posters for the Yale School of Architecture.

OR, if you’re in your 20s, you know him as the founder and blogger on Design Observer where he always writes the most honest and compelling posts.

All generations agree: Michael is amazing. Brilliant work, brilliant guy. His medal is long overdue.

But what makes Michael even more interesting is really this…

Michael Bierut knows every one of you, no matter what your age is. He knows your names, where you’re from, where you work, what you’ve designed, and whether it’s better or worse than the last thing you did. If he liked something you designed along the way, he probably sent you a little note telling you so. He may have even saved a design of yours that he came across, and it’s downstairs in his basement with the million other things he’s saved.

If he runs into you, he might reference something that influenced you, or he may know one of your clients, or he read an article that had direct bearing on something that involved you somehow, or he knew who you competed against on a project you just won. Maybe it was even him, and if it was, he’ll tell you so.

He seems to know all this stuff very naturally, like a guy who just coincidentally, has exactly the same interests that you do.

At Pentagram, he is an indispensible resource. Every partner relies on him for information, no matter how trivial. Mention a book to him and he’s read it and he’ll recommend two others like it that you will also enjoy. Bring up a song, he knows all the words and might entertain you with a stanza or two, and he manages to carry a tune. Reference a movie to him and he’s always seen it and can quote some relevant piece of dialog VERBATIM as if he had spent his entire life rehearsing for that moment when you’d bring it up. Mention a potential new project to him and he’ll know more than a bit about it and recommend the two three things he’s read in The Times on that subject, and then he’ll forward the articles to you.

Michael’s brain is a massive compendium that’s been carefully edited to contain the world’s most interesting stuff. Political stuff, cultural stuff, humanistic stuff, things all about you and me. Stuff that makes up the American experience.

For Michael, that experience is never very far from his childhood in Parma, Ohio, a middle class suburb of Cleveland where Michael went to high school with what he calls “real Americans.” Michael knows who real Americans are. He accepts, without judgment, that real Americans vote for presidents in national elections the way they pick student council presidents in high school, as popularity contests, not by reading editorials in the New York Times. He knows that attracting people to go to events, or belong to organizations is not far off from getting a gang of teenagers to go to their senior proms. He knows that if he wants an accurate read on whether something is known or understood by broad American audiences, he’s much better off asking him mom that asking me, or you.

Michael relies on baseball and movie analogies or personal anecdotes to make his points about design, rather than complicated dissertations on typography or language theory. Things that real Americans understand. No wonder his clients love him.

I’ve learned from Michael that when you break down the expectations of design, in relationship to various audiences, what you find consistent in all good design is that it is really just a way of being nice to people. Sometimes that means a message is funny, or a thing looks cool. But in some instances the best way of being nice is no visible design at all. And Michael is one of the few designers who is truly smart enough to accept this and use it.

It makes him the ultimate communicator. He can move people to embrace ideas because he understands what they think, what they know, how they feel and who they are. And that makes him our best advocate for design.

At the last AIGA conference in Boston, Michael stepped out on stage overdressed in a tuxedo, and beckoned the audience of 3,000 to its feet. After they had stood up and were paying the appropriate serious attention that his tuxedo and demeanor demanded, he launched into an anthem “O, AIGA,” sung a cappella to the tune of the star spangled banner, with the lyrics replaced by asinine design-insider jokes. And the audience became, in that brief thrilling moment, unified, as never before, as one community, all pulled together by that incredible spine-tingling, intimate moment of sublime schmuckiness.

When he had finished the audience stayed on its feet cheering and the emcee, John Hockenberry, came out and said, “Now that’s power!”

That’s also design. And the mind and the man that conceived it is nothing less than our own national treasure.

Paula Scher
25 October 2006