New at Pentagram
New Work: Detroit Institute of Arts
The suite of interactive interpretive installations created by Pentagram for the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Founded in 1885, the Detroit Institute of Arts recently underwent an extensive six year, $158 million renovation that sought, among other things, to rethink the display of the museum’s permanent collection. As part of the renovation, Lisa Strausfeld and her team worked with the museum's education and interpretation department to develop a suite of permanent media-based interactive exhibitions that would help make the collection more accessible through the use of technology.
New Work: ‘Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy’
Summer equals superheroes, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art has its own summer blockbuster this year in “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy”, presented by The Costume Institute. The exhibition explores the symbolic and metaphysical associations between fictional comic book characters and fashion and features popular icons such as Superman, Spider-Man, Hulk, Wonder Woman, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and Jean-Paul Gaultier. The show will be celebrated tonight at the Institute’s spring gala—co-chaired by George Clooney, of Batman & Robin nippled Batsuit infamy—before opening to the public on Wednesday, 7 May. It remains on view through 1 September.
Abbott Miller’s design for the exhibition catalogue affirms the alliance between fantasy and fashion through the juxtaposition of fashion imagery, comic book details and film and TV stills of superheroes in a comic book frame format. These images have been closely cropped and break the frames to heighten the sense of interconnection. “Comics pioneered the fragmentation of time and space with multiple-frame compositions,” says Miller. “Our design uses this comics strategy to show multiple details and perspectives of a single garment.” The catalogue also features a pressed tin front and back cover that adds a tactile, three-dimensional element to the design, and of course doubles as a kind of armor or chest plate (think Iron Man).
Although nostalgic—the tin cover is reminiscent of a superheroes lunch box—the catalogue avoids a profusion of obvious comic book mimicry. There are no speech bubbles, allowing the images to speak for themselves, and instead of newsprint, the pages have a high-gloss acrylic coating that make the colors pop from the page. In an effort to differentiate the introductory essay by Michael Chabon (Secret Skin: An Essay in Unitard Theory) from the rest of the catalogue, the commentary has been designed as a book within a book and printed with a silver border as opposed to white.
Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy is published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.
A look inside the book after the jump.
Continue reading "New Work: ‘Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy’"
This Monday: Abbott Miller at Central Saint Martins
Abbott Miller will present a free lecture on Monday night at Central Saint Martins. He will discuss recent projects as well as give a preview of work in progress, including his exhibition design for the Harley-Davidson Museum, his catalogue design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s summer exhibition Superheroes: From Fashion to Fantasy and his Brno Echo exhibition for the Brno Biennale. Abbott’s introduction will be provided by Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune and columnist for the New York Times Magazine. Monday, 28 April from 6:30 pm at the Cochrane Theatre, Southampton Row, London. Tickets are free and available from the Cochrane Theatre Box Office.
Abbott Miller at Central Saint Martins
Central Saint Martins presents an evening with Abbott Miller, with an introduction by Alice Rawsthorn. Monday, 28 April from 6:30 pm at the Cochrane Theatre, Southampton Row, London. Tickets are free and available from the Cochrane Theatre Box Office.
Abbott Miller Guests on This Week’s ‘Design Matters’
Abbott Miller will be the guest on Debbie Millman’s internet talk radio show Design Matters this Friday, 28 March at 3 pm EST. Tune in here for the live show and (later) the archived podcast.
Head Start
False Start, the new issue of 2wice designed by Abbott Miller, is noted in this week’s Village Voice. False Start presents a single performance by the choreographer Jonah Bokaer, arranged flipbook-like across 45 spreads. Check out an animated preview of the issue here.
Design Sponge Visits the Miller-Lupton Residence
Abbott Miller and Ellen Lupton open their Baltimore home to Design Sponge.
Merge on View at the Art Institute of Chicago
Merge, the wallpaper designed by Abbott Miller for Knoll, is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the exhibition Figuration in Contemporary Design. The exhibit, organized by Architecture and Design curator Joseph Rosa, explores the recent resurgence of figurative characteristics in design and features the work of 28 designers including Petra Blaisse, Marcel Wonders and Herzog & de Meuron. On view through the 8th of June.
Mike Likes SAM
NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg shows off the new Seattle Art Museum identity during a visit to the museum giftshop. (Via Gothamist).
Abbott Miller at RGD DesignThinkers
Abbott Miller will be a keynote speaker at DesignThinkers, the annual conference of the RGD Ontario, 17 to 19 October in Toronto. Other featured speakers include Stefan Sagmeister, James Victore, Karim Rashid, Marc Gobé, Debbie Millman and Hillman Curtis. Registration information here.
‘2wice’ Featured in ‘The New York Times’
The latest issue of 2wice designed by Abbott Miller was featured in The New York Times on Saturday. Titled Green World: Merce Cunningham, the issue is devoted to the work of the famed choreographer as it captures, through the stunning photography of Katherine Wolkoff, Cunningham’s troupe as they perform in the gardens of the Italian Renaissance-inspired Vizcaya mansion in Miami.
Home ‘Invasion’
Abbott Miller and Ellen Lupton’s Baltimore home was used as a setting for The Invasion, the new, not entirely successful remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Miller-Lupton home doubled as the residence of the protagonist, Dr. Carol Bennell, played by Nicole Kidman. Ellen Lupton wrote about the experience of having a Hollywood set decorator overtake her home on her blog, Design Your Life.
Room snatching after the jump.
Out Today: 'Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design'
Today marks the publication of Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, a collection of writings by Michael Bierut from Princeton Architectural Press.
The 272-page hardcover book brings together twenty years of essays on subjects that range from New York’s faulty “Push for Walk Signal” buttons, to the disappearance of the AT&T logo, to the implications of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire for interaction designers. Many of the pieces first appeared on Design Observer, the popular blog that Michael edits with Jessica Helfand and Bill Drenttel, including favorites like “Designing Under the Influence,” “I Hate ITC Garamond,” and “The Road to Hell: Now Paved with Innovation!” Seventy-nine Essays also includes pieces that appeared elsewhere and pieces that have never been published in other collections, like “Waiting for Permission,” “How to Become Famous” and “Ten Footnotes on a Manifesto.”
Michael’s writing is marked by its accessibility, its wit and its almost maniacal eclecticism. For instance, a survey of the entries under the letter “D” in the book’s index turns up, among others, Jacques Derrida, Stuart Davis, design by committee, Cameron Diaz, Walt Disney, Dr. Strangelove, Mort Drucker, Marguerite Duras and W.A. Dwiggins. If you seek a design book that navigates with aplomb between French semioticians, typographers, movie stars and Mad magazine cartoonists, Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design is the one for you.
While the book has no pictures, Abbott Miller’s design provides its own form of visual interest. Each essay is set in a different typeface, and readers can attempt to make real or imaginary connections between essay subject and font selection. We can guess why the essay on AT&T is set in C.H. Griffith’s Bell Gothic (it was designed in 1938 for the Bell Telephone Directory) or why the essay about Stanley Kubrick is set in Paul Renner’s Futura (it was reportedly the director’s favorite typeface); the rationale behind other selections may be a bit more obscure, or even completely nonexistent.
Michael points out that the list cover price of $24.95 works out to less than 32 cents per essay. “Design books are luxuries, especially for students,” he says. “I hope that this one provides something for everyone, at a price that anyone can afford.”
Renaming Baltimore
Abbott Miller, in collaboration with the writer Lalita Noronha, proposes ideas for a new identity for Baltimore in the local magazine Urbanite.
New Work: Seattle Art Museum
The new SAM identity designed by Pentagram.
Abbott Miller and his team have designed the new identity and program of environmental graphics for the Seattle Art Museum that reopens to the public this weekend after a 95,000 square foot expansion designed by Allied Works Architecture. The identity helps to integrate the expansion into the existing building designed by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates and the museum with its two sister locations in the city.
Abbott Miller Speaks at the DSVC
Abbott Miller will present a lecture at the Dallas Society of Visual Communications, next Wednesday, 2 May at City Place, 2711 N. Haskell in Dallas. Reception at 6 pm, talk at 7. Info here.
New Work: MICA
MICA’s new identity is set in the Giza typeface, based on slab serif lettering popular around the time of the school’s founding in 1826.
Abbott Miller has designed a new identity for MICA, the Maryland Institute College of Art, that launched on 1 April at the school’s annual Admission Open House. Miller, a faculty member at MICA, worked with his senior designer Kristen Spilman, a MICA graduate, to develop the identity based on research performed by graphic design graduate students at the College.
New Work: ‘The Namesake’
Cover of The Namesake: A Portrait of the Film
Abbott Miller and John Kudos designed the book The Namesake: A Portrait of the Film, a tie-in to the new film adapted from the acclaimed novel by Jhumpa Lahiri and directed by Mira Nair, that opens today in limited release.
At Home With Abbott and Ellen
Abbott Miller and Ellen Lupton’s Bolton HIll rowhouse is featured in the Baltimore Sun.
Abbott Miller at ‘Body/Language’
Abbott Miller will be a speaker at “Body/Language,” an AIGA/NY conference about fashion and graphic design. Other featured speakers include Isaac Mizrahi, Andy Spade, Ruth Ansel and Paul Boudens. Saturday, 24 March at the French Institute, New York City. Registration information here.
Abbott Miller at Cutting Edge Conference
Abbott Miller will present a lecture about graphic fashion and fashion graphics at Cutting Edge: The Avant-Garde and Fashion, the eighth annual fashion conference organized by Initiatives in Art and Culture. Other speakers include Zac Posen, Isabel and Ruben Toledo, Bert Stern and Tim Gunn. Thursday, 30 November through Sunday, 3 December 2006 (Abbott will appear Sunday) at Parsons The New School of Design, 560 Seventh Avenue in New York. Registration information here; download the conference brochure here.
New Work: Architect Magazine
Premier issue featuring Ross Wimer of SOM
Abbott Miller and his team have designed the new magazine Architect, launching this month. The title focuses on architecture as discipline, process and professional community. As Ned Cramer, the editor in chief, describes it, the magazine “will celebrate the people—famous and otherwise—who get buildings built.“ The editorial design follows suit, with information appearing in an accessible format. Architect is published by Hanley Wood and incorporates Architecture magazine—a title that Abbott once redesigned back in 1997.
Several spreads from the first issue after the jump.
Update: Witold Rybczynski critiques the magazine on Slate.
Bottle Service
(Click for larger view)
Box of wine: Abbott Miller transformed an industrial shipping container into a cellar for a feature in the current issue of Food & Wine that asked three designers to propose new ideas for wine storage. Abbott jokes that his scheme, which places the shipping container into the side of a hill, would be perfect for an “eco-friendly Teletubby/hobbit hipster.”
‘Merge’ Joins Permanent Collection at Cooper-Hewitt
“Merge” from the Grammar Collection for Knoll
Abbott Miller’s “Merge” pattern wallcovering for KnollTextiles has been selected for the permanent collection at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Gregory Herringshaw, Assistant Curator of Wallcoverings, comments:
“We have other pieces of graphic design by Abbott Miller in the collection so this makes a great link with the Drawings & Prints Department. The Cooper-Hewitt has a nice collection of wallpapers designed by artists/designers/architects going back to about 1900…‘Merge’ (is one of) the first papers in this group designed by graphic artists. I have papers designed by Andy Warhol, Edward Bawden and John Rombola, who all worked in graphic design but were better known for their illustrations or fine art pieces. The addition of (‘Merge’) keeps this group moving forward.”
New Work: 2wice
The Cunningham & Rauschenberg issue
The collaborative works of Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg are the focus of the new issue of 2wice, out now. 2wice staged a photo shoot with Merce Cunningham and his company, in costumes designed by Rauschenberg for 12 dances that were originally created between 1952 and 2000. The issue was designed by Abbott Miller and Jeremy Hoffman and features a new custom font, 2wice Egyptian, designed by Chester at Village. Photography by Joachim Ladefoged.
New Work: The Couch
(Click image for larger view)
Abbott Miller and his team have designed “The Couch: Thinking in Repose,” a special exhibition at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, mounted in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Freud’s birth (6 May). The show opens today and remains on view through 5 November.
“The Couch” examines the cultural significance of this simple piece of furniture and how it became synonymous with psychoanalysis. The show is sited in the apartment above the Freud Museum (which occupies Freud’s original apartment and practice) and makes use of the “psychic residue” of the location; for instance, a section on psychiatric water treatments is located in the bathroom.
Abbott was also invited to create a special installation for the museum’s storefront window, a unique opportunity previously extended to distinguished artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Joseph Kosuth. Abbott has also designed the accompanying exhibition catalogue, a commemorative stamp for the Austrian Post, and the official identity for Freud Jahr 2006, the Sigmund Freud Foundation’s celebration of the anniversary.
First images from the exhibition after the jump. More coming soon.
New Work: Sigmund Freud Foundation
Abbott Miller and his team have designed the identity for Freud Jahr 2006, the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sigmund Freud. Coming soon: “The Couch: Thinking in Repose,” the special exhibition designed by Abbott for the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna.
New Work: Grammar Collection for Knoll
(Click image for larger view)
Abbott Miller and his team have designed the Grammar Collection, a new series of wallcoverings for KnollTextiles. The three patterns are based on overlapping typography. “This is an appropriate theme for any room where there is conversation,” says Abbott.
More images after the jump.
New Work: Vilcek Foundation
Abbott Miller and his team have designed the identity and website of the Vilcek Foundation, a philanthropic organization that honors foreign-born artists and scholars who have made lasting contributions to American society. The prize includes a trophy designed by Stefan Sagmeister.
New Work: ‘Sarah Bernhardt’
(Click image for larger view)
Abbott Miller and his team have designed “Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama,” on view at the Jewish Museum. The exhibition places “the Divine Sarah” in the context of her renown: Once the most famous woman in the world, she was the proto-celebrity who, in addition to being one of the most lauded actors ever, and the favored subject of countless classic Art Nouveau posters, had her own lines of hair curlers and liqueurs.
More images after the jump.
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