Michael Bierut - blissfully on target by Gregory Thorne

Blissfully on Target

All original artworks belong to the artists: Michael Bierut, Vignelli Associates, Pentagram. Some artworks have been redesigned for use in this publication.

MICHAELBIERUT Blissfully on Target Written by Gregory Thorne Artwork by Michael Bierut

010

Introduction 028

The Student 046

The Prodigy 060

The Partner 086

The Teacher

Introduction Michael Bierut Blissfully on Target brings together major works by the designer that have made crucial impacts on the design world, showcasing his arsenal of creative solutions to some of the most memorable design problems and portraying the amazing impact he has had on modern designers, students and the way we visually communicate daily. Michael Bierut is a partner in the international design consultancy Pentagram and previously worked for a decade under legendary designer Massimo Vignelli where he was the head of graphic design. He is a co-founder of the online design magazine Design Observer, whose articles inform and inspire designers world wide. He is a multi published author including a selection of the essays he wrote for Design Observer, since its founding in 2003, entitled Seventynine Short Essays on Design (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007). Michael is a regular contributor to I.D. magazine and to Public Radio International’s arts program “Studio 360.” Michael is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art, and a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of Management. Among hundreds of design awards he has received is a Medal of Excellence by the American Institute of Graphic Design, an organization which he was the president from 1998 to 2001.

Michael Bierut has been described as many things including a “Superhero of Graphic design”(Heller,S, 2012) and his list of achievements and clientele from Vignelli and Pentagram speak for themselves. But despite this Michael himself will admit, “I don’t think I’m a creative person” (Bierut, M, 2012) But rather, likens himself to a doctor where the patients are the design problems and as Michael also states “the sicker the better”. Bierut does admit to being a listener, communicator and above all problem solver. Its his ability to address a client’s needs and wishes by looking past his own design preferences, by incorporating his vast knowledge of what seems like everything to do with design into these projects that makes him one of the most recognizable and influential Graphic Designers and communicators of the modern age.

Pentagram New York

Vignelli Associates

UCCD

TIME

LINE

Michael Bierut

Blissfully On Target

Highlights from the career of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s graphic design Superhero

Ellected to Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI)

Partner Pentagram

1989

1990

AIGA Medalist

Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design Published

Design Mind Award Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

2006

2007

2008

Design Observer is launched

Co Edited Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist

AIG Art Directors Club Hall of Fame

President of American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA)

19881990

2003

Vignelli Vice President of Graphic Design

1986

President of AIGA National

Vignelli Associates

1980

1998

Intern for Chris Pullman at WGBH

1978

Chaired AIGA National Conference with Paula Scher

Graphic design at University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning

19751979

1991

Michael Bierut Born Parma, Cleveland Ohio

1957 1957

Michael Bierut Born Parma, Cleveland Ohio

Now

Vignelli Associates

1980

Architectural League of New York

New Yorkers for Parks

Graphic design at University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning

Intern for Chris Pullman at WGBH

19751979

1978

High School

1988 -1990

1991

President of American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA)

Chaired AIGA National Conference with Paula Scher

Begins work with Yale School of Art

1986

Vignelli Vice President of Graphic Design

Ellected to Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) Partner Pentagram

1989

1990

Now

New Yorkers for Parks

Architectural League of New York

2006

AIGA Medalist

AIG Art Directors Club Hall of Fame

2003

Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design Published Design Mind Award Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

2007

2008

Design Observer is launched

Co Edited Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist

President of AIGA National

1998

The student Michael Bierut was born in 1957 in Cleveland, Ohio in the United States of America. At high school Bierut expressed a keen interest in design and was very intent on exploring his talents for fine arts from an early age. In an interview with Design Boom he stated “as an enthusiastic young high school artist 40 years ago, I found that I was happiest when I could use my artistic skills in the service of some practical goal...I was also always interested in lots of things, particularly reading and books. I found graphic design to be a perfect way to combine art, usefulness, and literacy.” Although he recognized his talents early Beirut was oblivious to the career aspirations that he possessed. At the time Graphic Design, as a career aspiration, was not heavily promoted to the young adults of Ohio. In an interview with Stephen Heller for Eye Magazine Bierut describes when he realised he wanted to become a Graphic designer “Because I drew well, I was the guy who always designed the logo for the clubhouse or painted the band’s name on the drum. I didn’t know it had a name until I found a book by [former CBS art director] S. Neil Fujita in the school library. It was part of a series called something like Your Future in … Cosmetology, or Garbage Disposal, or Plumbing, and there was one called Your Future in Commercial Art/Graphic Design. Up to that moment I thought this stuff got done by Robert Rauschenberg or Franz Kline or Frank Stella banging it out on a Saturday; they’d put aside the paintings with the slashes and the stripes, and do a Three Dog Night cover. When I found out it had a name – I was fifteen years old – I went to the Parma Regional Library in Ohio and looked up graphic design in the card catalogue. They had one book: Graphic Design Manual by Armin Hofmann.” 28

Michael was hypnotized by all the pictures of dots and squares and after repeatedly borrowing the book from the library he visited a department store in downtown Cleveland to purchase his own copy. Instead of Hofmann’s book he was lead to a brand new publication called Graphic Design by Milton Glaser, with Bob Dylan on the Cover. The two books were diametrically opposed and Bierut found himself at a crossroads between Modernism and Eclectism. And these two pieces of opposing Design literature would play an important role in sculpting Bierut’s design outlook in the future. Certainly these two represent the two sides of the communication coin, Modernism vs Postmodernism. After leaving high school Bierut attended the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. A school where coincidentally most of the instructors were either born in Switzerland and had studied with Hofmann or had studied at Yale. He describes it as “a very Yale-Swiss kind of education rather than the Glaser tradition.” Bierut’s education at university allowed him to explore a range of media and design movements. After completing his education he approached Vignelli associates with the final product of his studies, his portfolio. He revisited his job-winning portfolio in an article he wrote entitled “May I show you my portfolio” in Design Observer 2007.

Kurt Schwitters

Words by Michael Bierut We heard a lot of names like Hoffman, Muller-Brockmann, and Weingart. And, of course, Paul Rand. I didn’t realize it as a 17-year-old from suburban Cleveland, but in applying to study graphic design at the University of Cincinnati in 1975, I was enlisting in a particular midwestern strain of a nascent global design ideology. Most of my instructors had studied at Yale University under Rand, Bradbury Thompson and Alvin Eisenman, or at the Allgemeine Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland with Hoffman and Weingart. So out went the crosshatching, and in came the grid systems. I became a designer with a split personality. Without ever putting aside my passion for lush, literal illustration and blunt commercial art, I became an enthusiastic student of the “new Swiss” movement that was sweeping across American design education in the wake of Weingart’s 1972-73 U.S. lecture tour. A week-long workshop, resulting in this interpretation of a Rand quote from “Design and the Play Instinct.” Like so many such interpretations, it is neither playful, nor fun, nor surprising, but rather a fairly succinct compendium of then-trendy European design gestures: dots, lines, diagonals, and simulated light-to-dark gradations. 32

That’s not to say that we didn’t learn practical things too, like how to render letterforms in a brand of black and white poster paint called Plaka that was specially imported from Switzerland and stocked in the UC bookstore expressly for us graphic design students. We were asked to choose the name of an artist and interpret it typographically. (We didn’t know we were fortunate to get a choice; year after year, Rand assigned all his students the same name, Leger.) I managed to combine what now seem like over-obvious visual puns with the expected typographic moves of the day, painstakingly executed by hand. For Ansel Adams, that meant an allusion to the photographer’s trademark Zone System. Or the enigmatic absences of Magritte’s surrealism... .. or the collages of the Dada movement. With Schwitters, I got to indulge a seemingly insatiable infatuation I had for what Bill Drenttel calls Silk Road Typography, also beloved by kidnappers, sampled mildly in the Rand poster above, and with real gusto here. Hand painting letterforms is one of those ostensibly obsolete skills that I now concede was truly character building. Those hours improved my eye not just for typography but for symbol design and formmaking in general.

In an inversion of actual practice, formal exercises were often developed into preemptive responses to imaginary assignments for nonexistent clients. In this case, the Schwitters exercise became a poster for a notional exhibit at a gallery I invented that got its name either from the hero of Ayn Rand’s epic novel Atlas Shrugged (which I read six times in my five years of college, sorry) or from the fact that I had only capital G’s left in my collection of presstype. This may account as well for the date range, oddly late in Schwitters’s career for such a show. I am relieved that at least the artist was still alive in 1945; content was a pretty malleable thing for me in those days and I wouldn’t have checked.

Words by Michael Bierut This was a classic assignment given by Cincinnati professor Joe Bottoni that I believe is still given to this day: pick an animal and render it in simplified forms. I have fond memories of sketching gorillas at the Cincinnati Zoo. Oddly enough, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember seeing the work of local boy Charley Harper until much later. Thank God, because he had taken almost all the available animals for himself. Painted by hand, again, in black and white Plaka. My selection of this subject turned into a problem when the second part of the assignment was revealed: to show the animal in motion. Gorillas are basically immobile. My way around this was a rare instance where I came up with a mildly funny solution to a class assignment. Note that the lettering on the tire is pretty much the same as the word â&#x20AC;&#x153;Kurtâ&#x20AC;? in the Schwitters exercise. I really knew how to paint those kind of letters.

Coppelia

Words by Michael Bierut This was my response to a competition held by the Cincinnati Ballet to design a poster to promote their holiday show. This is clearly my attempt to steal from another one of my secret idols, Gilbert Lesser, the New York-based designer perhaps best known for the Studio 54 logo, and a non-doctrinaire master of geometric minimalism and Helvetica. Handcut Pantone paper and presstype. I lost the competition to someone — a non-designer, it looked like — who did a drawing of a ballerina and stuck some cursive typography next to it: an early reminder that high design didn’t always play well with the regular folks.

On my own time, I dreamed of merging my interest in illustration, my love of commercial art, and my growing facility with classic form resolution. Freelance assignments gave the chance to try. I designed (and wrote) posters to promote the school magazine, Clifton, where my then-girlfriend (now wife) was business manager. The obvious model for this eclecticism was Pushpin, of course. But so tragically futile! How easy it seemed to imitate anyone who used flat colors, geometric shapes and sans serif type on a grid, and how hard it was to knock off Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast. I began to realize around then that maybe I didn’t have what it took to make it as a designing illustrator. (Note the Times Bold, one of my favorites back then).

This portrait of jazz saxophonist Sam Rivers, copied from photographs on his album The Complete Blue Note Sessions. This is the kind of thing upon which I had built my reputation by the time I graduated from high school: painstaking realism in the style of Bernie Fuchs, Bob Heindel and especially Mark English. There wasn’t any instruction in this kind of thing available at UC. I did it after hours, as a private exercise in self indulgence. One never heard names like Fuchs, Heindel and English invoked in our classes.

This piece, one of several I did for Print’s annual student cover design competition, was just about the last time I undertook an ambitious illustration, this one a selfportrait based on a old black-and-white picture my mom commissioned when I was five. I still like it, although it isn’t very good. I lost the competition, of course, and retreated into the comfort of typography for, well, the rest of my life. I’m older and wiser now, and, maybe, sounder and safer. Is it too late to take up crosshatching again?

Words by Michael Bierut I believe it was this piece that got me the job at Vignelli Associates. The assignment was to design a brochure for commercial label papers. Each page a square, a simple 2x2 grid, one size of Helvetica in two weights: quintessential International Style modernism straight out of the tube. More surprising to me, and dismaying as well, is how eerily the cropped label artwork anticipates the packaging I was to do for Saks Fifth Avenue nearly 30 years later. It’s sobering to realize how trapped I am by my own handwriting……..

Michaelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actual portfolio, cardboard and fake leather, 34 by 42 inches, circa 1978.

The prodigy Michael Bierut spent 10 years working for Massimo Vignelli at Vingelli Associates. Massimo is a celebrated Modernest graphic designer who is very outspoken about design and is famously quoted saying that there are only 5 typefaces that designers need to use. The influence Massimo had over Bierut is one of strict structures, balanced asymmetry and simplistic style elements and typefaces. Vignelli expected his employee to be an extension of himself and his fingerprint can be seen in much of Michaels work from his time at Vignelli Associates. “Probably the most interesting thing I learned is that a lot of the things about design that tend to get designers really interested aren’t that important,” Bierut once said to Steven Heller. Bierut acknowledges that people might not actually read the annual reports and corporate brochures that designers make. So he strives to make things that people are able to read and want to read, “All the attention designers give to clever layouts and putting the page numbers in a cool place, when ordinary people just want to read the words and look at the pictures. Massimo taught me to focus on the big ideas, and I thought that big ideas were what connected with the greatest number of people.”(Bierut,M, 2013) At the beginning of his time with Massimo, Michael would work all day as a graphic designer, travel home to have dinner with his wife, then return to Vignelli to work the night shift. It was his unrivaled drive and dedication that Massimo Vignelli acknowledged when promoting Bierut to Head of Graphic Design where he would lead a team of designers for the duration of his time there.

Being the knowledge-hungry man that he is, Michael Bierut wanted to achieve more with his talent. “Massimo’s point of view is that cluttered or selfconscious design bespeaks some sort of moral failing. But I never felt that. I always believed that if you have the time to show you were awake while you were designing, then, why not?” (Bierut,M, 2007) It was upon attending an AIGA lecture session that Michael Bierut met Paula Scher who was to become his Partner at Pentagram. He was inspired by her outlook on graphic design and her rebellious attitude towards the traditional ideas and approach compared to that of strict modernists such as his own masters. Michael Bierut describes a discussion he had after being inspired by Paula Scher upon seeing her presentation accompanying Massimo Vignelli. “Paula is a perfect example of the antiVignelli approach in the purest way.” MB: “Man, Paula is great.” MV: “All that novelty stuff and those Victorian typefaces, that’s not the way to do it.” MB: “Massimo, if you design 200 album covers a year, you have to be eclectic. You can’t just do all the classical ones in Garamond and all the rock ones in Futura.” MV: “That would be fantastic!” “Paula’s kind of virtuosity really spoke to me deep down inside.” (Bierut,M, 2013)

Vignelli New York Subway Map Vignelli Associates, New York Design firm: Vignelli Associates Art director: Massimo Vignelli Designer: Massimo Vignelli, Assistant Designer: Michael Bierut

Post Designersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Saturday Mailers Vignelli Associates, New York, 1986 Direct mail, Promotion Design firm: Vignelli Associates Art director: Massimo Vignelli Designer: Michael Bierut Typographer: Concept Typographers Printer: Combine Graphics Client: International Design Center

Knoll Design 1981 1st Edition Vignelli Associates, New York Design firm: Vignelli Associates Art director: Eric Larrabee Designer: Massimo Vignelli, Michael Bierut

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Massimo managed an output that would put offices ten times the size to shameâ&#x20AC;?

IDCNY #15, #16 Vignelli Assoc, New York, 1985 Corporate communication, Newsletter Art director: Massimo Vignelli Designers: Michael Bierut Typographer: Concept Typographers. Printer: Combine Graphics Client: International Design Center, NY

Skyline, October 1981

Jan-Mar Quarterly Calendar, 1986

Vignelli Associates, New York, 1981

Vignelli Associates, New York, 1986

Magazine, Type design

Promotion, Calendar

Art director: Massimo Vignelli

Designer: Michael Bierut

Typographer: Typogram

Typographer: Village Type & Graphics

Printer: Ambassador Arts

Printer: Trumbull Printing

Client: Ambassador Arts

Publisher: Skyline

A I IDCNY

Metropolitan Tower

IDCNY Welcomes the AIA Convention

Vignelli Associates, New York, 1986

Vignelli Associates, New York, 1987

Brochure, Promotion

Posters, Promotion, Type design

Art director: Massimo Vignelli

Design firm: Vignelli Associates

Designers: Michael Bierut, ConnieÂ Ross

Designer: Michael Bierut

Photographer: Richard Berenholtz

Typographer: Trufont

Typographer: Concept Typographers

Printer: Combine Graphics

Printer: National Bickford Foremost

Paper: Simpson Paper Company Client: International Design Center

IDCNY 26: Chair Fair

IDCNY 23 & 24

Vignelli Associates, New York, 1988Â Newsletter

Vignelli Associates, New York, 1986

Art director: Massimo Vignelli

Designer: Michael Bierut Photographer: Lori Shulweis Typographer: Concept Typographers Printer: Combine Graphics Publisher: International Design Center

Promotion, Newsletter Designer: Michael Bierut Typographer: Concept Typographers Printer: Combine Graphics Client: International Design Center Publisher: International Design Center

Fratelli Rossetti

M1: News from Harry Macklowe

Vignelli Associates, New York, 1990

Vignelli Associates, New York, 1988

Package, Type design Art Director: Massimo Vignelli Designer: Massimo Vignelli Lettering: Michael Bierut Client: Fratelli Rossetti

Corporate communication, Newsletter Art director: Michael Bierut Designer: Michael Bierut Typographer: Graphics Technology Printer: Combine Graphics Client: Harry Macklowe Real Estate

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I sometimes suspected that he had a secret (or not so secret) desire to design everything in the world. Since that was impossible even for a man of his substantial energy, he decided instead to enlist an army of disciples to design the world in his own imageâ&#x20AC;?

The partner Michaels career as a partner of Pentagram came shortly after this meeting as he was approached by existing partners of the firm and offered a position leading a team of graphic designers. This is where Beirut was able to spread his wings and apply his unique knowledge and experience to the business and begin to explore less strict styles of Graphic Design. Partner and close friend, Paula Scher illustrates Michaels almost OCD approach towards good design. “Michael has a brain that is a giant compendium. He absorbs and retains everything and pulls it out at the appropriate moment and uses it to its maximal effect. Mention a movie and he quotes from it, maybe he enacts a little scene. Mention a book and he recites a passage and relates it to three other books that have the same spirit, that you haven’t read, but you will now. Mention a designer or architect and he knows the most recent project they’ve completed and their first project, how they’ve changed, how they haven’t, who influenced them, who they influence, and he sometimes will make a little sketch or diagram of their work. There isn’t a day that goes by when I haven’t asked Michael what he knows about anything and what he thinks about everything. If knowledge is power, then Michael Bierut is the most powerful person in the entire design community.”(Scher,P, 2013) Michaels List of clients at Pentagram include; the Alliance for Downtown New York, Benetton, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Alfred A. Knopf, the Walt Disney Company, Mohawk Paper Mills, Motorola, MillerCoors, the Toy Industry Association, Princeton University, Yale School of Architecture, New York University, the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Sex, and the New York Jets.

Bierut’s recent activities have included the development of a new identity and signage for the expanded Morgan Library and Museum; The development of environmental graphics for The New York Times Building; the design of an identity and public promotion for Philip Johnson’s Glass House; the creation of marketing strategies for the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation; the development of a new brand strategy and packaging for luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue; and the redesign of the magazine The Atlantic. He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, all in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C; the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany; and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Montreal. He has served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1988 to 1990 and is president emeritus of AIGA National. He currently serves as a director of the Architectural League of New York and of New Yorkers for Parks. In 1989, Bierut was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale, in 2003 he was named to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, and in 2006 he received the profession’s highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in recognition of his distinguished achievements and contributions to the field. In 2008 he received the Design Mind Award in the National Design Awards presented by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

Mohawk

Words by Michael Bierut The logo is of course a monogram for the name Mohawk. It’s based on the letter M, but it’s also constructed to evoke the papermaking process and the printing process, both of which involve paper going around cylinders. In an abstract way, it suggests how big rolls of paper look when they’re stacked up in a warehouse or when they’re being shipped. You know, those cylinders when they’re stood on end have round bottoms and straight sides. So, the M can also be four rolls of paper interlocking with each other. You have five dots being connected by those four lines, which speaks to

the basic idea of connection, which is what Mohawk paper is designed for. It’s designed to be printed on. These days, it can be printed on in a million different ways. And no one prints on paper unless their goal is to communicate something to someone, right? Whether what you’re communicating is “Happy Birthday, Aunt Martha! Here’s a little book I put together with pictures of your niece and nephew,” or whether it’s the corporate responsibility report for a giant global corporation, it’s about communication.

And communication has to do with making connections between the publisher, in effect, and the audience, between one person and another person. You know, the permanence of printed materials — for the writer and the reader — when something is captured in print, it really is a way of sharing language and ideas. As human beings, it’s this sharing that makes us a civilization, I think.

Nuts.com

Words by Paula Scher A family business, Nuts.com prides itself on a personal approach and has always used a friendly, personable, slightly zany tone of voice in its marketing. This can be seen on its website, where the four members of the Braverman family who run the company––Kenny (son of “Poppy” Sol), his son Jeffrey (recently profiled in The New York Times), Uncle Sandy and Cousin David––are represented as cartoon nuts and describe the company and its story in their own words. 70

Bierut’s redesign incorporates this irreverent and chatty tone of voice into the packaging with friendly handdrawn typography and illustrations. Bags and shipping boxes are covered in commentary: “This way to your taste buds!,” “Isn’t it nut-astic?,” etc. The typeface was hand-drawn by Bierut and converted into a font by Jeremy Mickel, who provided a lot of alternate characters. The illustrator Christoph Niemann redrew the cartoon nuts to complement the typeface; the mascots appear on the bags of nuts, where they are reversed

out to show the product inside. A bright, appealing colour palette completes the cheerful look. The result is fun, friendly and instantly memorable. “The arrival of a box from Nuts.com should be a real event!”.

Saks Fifth Avenue Words by Michael Bierut

When redesigning the logo we found the store had used literally dozens of logos since its founding. There was one interesting fact, however. Many of these logos were variations on the same theme: cursive writing, sometimes casual, sometimes Spencerian. Of these, one stood out, the logo drawn in 1973 by Tom Carnese, adapted from a signature introduced almost twenty years before. In many people’s minds, this still was the Saks logo. By coincidence, I knew it well: it was the logo that was at the heart of the identity system designed by my first boss, Massimo Vignelli, shortly before I started working for him in 1980. But simply reinstating a 30-year-old logo wouldn’t be enough. Saks was happy to emphasize its heritage, but it was even more eager to signal that it was looking to the future, a place of 74

constant change and surprise with a consistent dedication to quality. In our early creative sessions at Saks, we’d gathered a lot of visual inspiration. The team kept coming back to the boldness of artists like Franz Kline and Barnett Newman. Was there a way to get that kind of dramatic scale and energy into the program? We were excited when we finally hit on the solution. We took the cursive logo, redrew it with the help of font designer Joe Finocchiaro, and placed it in a black square. Then, we subdivided that square into a grid of 64 smaller squares. The 64 tiles can then be shuffled and rotated to form an almost infinite number of variations. We say almost infinite, but obviously there’s a fixed number of possibilities. Most of the individual logo tiles are quite lovely in their own right, and within the system can be used in various combinations to

form still more abstract compositions. Each of these suggests within its details the graphic character of the new logo. Enlarged, they have a kind of energy and drama that contrasts nicely with the original mark from which they were derived. The advantage of the program, deployed in black and white like the store’s holiday “snowflake” packaging, is that it creates recognizable consistency without sameness. The logo elements will be used in signage and direct mail and advertising. Most importantly, there are over forty different packages in the program, from jewellery boxes to hat boxes, and four sizes of shopping bags. In the new program, no two of these are alike, yet they all go together. Our hope is that they will all become associated in the minds of shoppers with the style and Elan of Saks Fifth Avenue.

MAD

Words from Pentagram & Michael Bierut The new symbol is built out of circles and squares, a reference to the fact this squarish building sits on one of the most prominent circles in New York City. The forms also refer in a subtle way to the building’s distinctive, some would say notorious, ‘lollipop’ columns, which will still be visible through the new façade. An entire alphabet, extrapolated from the three letters in the logo, will be used selectively on MAD’s marketing materials. Prior to 2002, the Museum of Arts and Design was called the American Craft Museum; it changed its name to accommodate the growing scope of its collection. Discussions of what is craft and what is art and design aside, the MAD acronym is a great asset. It’s short, pronounceable and memorable. But it’s also in some ways overly familiar. For example, there already is a well-known MAD logo, which 78

appears on the cover of a magazine that I loved when I was twelve. So part of our design problem was to make it surprising, less familiar, and proprietary—to come up with a MAD that could only be the Museum. We also wanted a way of writing the name that could embody the values of the Museum, something that seemed inventive and surprising, and that could appear in different ways on different occasions. The Museum, after all, is dedicated to artists who take typical forms—say, vessels, or chairs— and transform them over and over again. We hope that the simple forms of the new logo will permit just that kind of transformation. We then designed an entire alphabet and numbers based on the basic MAD combination and again, made out of squares and circles. We call it MAD Face. It’s fun but, as one can imagine, not the easiest thing to read. It doesn’t

work too well on fire exit signs, for instance. But it definitely reflects the inventive spirit of MAD, and we use it in the advertising campaign and on special occasions. A more conventional typeface, Futura, is used in print applications and signage. Like the logo, it is also based on geometry, with a perfectly round letter “o.”

A lot of my ideas are so simple and dumb that a simple dumb drawing is all it takes to describe it. -Michael Bierut

helvetica.

Michael Bierut’s involvement in the cult film ‘helvetica.’ is a fan favourite. Beirut’s great sense of humour & industry knowledge make his contribution to the film one of the most likeable and memorable.

Helvetica is an independent feature-length documentary film about typography and graphic design, centered on the typeface of the same name.

Director: Gary Hustwit

hel vehel ticave 82

“Everywhere you look you see typefaces. But there’s one you probably see more than any other one, and that’s Helvetica. You know, there it is, and it seems to come from no where. You know, it seems like air? It seems like gravity? ”

It’s The Real Thing. Period. Coke. Period. In Helvetica. Period. Any Questions? Of Course Not.

HIS GROTESK LOVE AFFAIR 83

Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist Pentagram Design, New York, 1998 Art director: Michael Bierut, Designers: Michael Bierut, Tibor Kalman, Michael English Typeface: News Gothic Printer: Dai Nippon Editors: Peter Hall, Michael Bierut Publisher: Princeton Architectural

A Wilderness of Error, The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald

Seventy Nine Short Essays on Design

Pentagram Design, New York, 2012

Michael Bierut, New York, 2007

Author: Errol Morris

Author: Michael Bierut

Art directors: Michael Bierut,

Designer: Michael Bierut

Editor: Michael Bierut

Printer: Dai Nippon

Publisher: Princeton Architectural

Editors: Michael Bierut, Tibor Kalman Publisher: Princeton Architectural

The teacher Although he is the leader of a Design team at one of the most reputable design firms in the world as well as being a prominent member of the AIGA and the New Yorkers for parks society, Michael Bierut still manages to dedicate time providing education to many young designers in the US. He is a prolific lecturer and operates on the opinion that no audience is too small. He has lectured and taught through many institutions but one of his most enduring clients is the Yale School of Architecture, where students are often exposed to his inspirational and witty stories and expert opinions.

The Yale Posters He has closely collaborated with Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the school, to produce a series of posters that are deep, rich and wide in their range of design. “We agreed upon a set of selfimposed restrictions to contrast with what I thought was the best example in this particular field: Willi Kunz’s posters for Columbia University’s School of Architecture.” Bierut elaborates. “Kunz had produced a very long-running, accomplished series of posters for Columbia, done with just one typeface: Univers, in only a couple of weights. He had designed these posters for years and years, and even if you saw one from far away, you would know that this was a Columbia poster. So when the Yale opportunity came along I first thought, ‘Well, I could just use a different typeface.’ Robert Stern, the new Dean at Yale, was from Columbia, so he would be familiar with Kunz’s work.” Upon meeting Stern, however, Bierut quickly revised his concept. “When Stern hired me,” Bierut recalls, “he simply said, ‘I want to surprise people.’

When I heard this, I immediately changed my idea from using just one typeface to the idea of ‘one and you’re out.’ I would only use a typeface once”. “We use lots of different display faces on the various posters,” says Bierut. “Sometimes lots of faces on a single poster. At the very start of the program, we decided that the main thing we wanted to signal to Yale’s audience was that the architecture program was eclectic and unpredictable. So it was natural for the posters to be constantly changing. There is one constant, however: the supporting typeface is almost always Franklin Gothic Light. It’s no fun to change everything every time”. “I like trying new typefaces,” Bierut digresses. “Thirty-eight years ago, I married the first girl I ever kissed, and I’ve been in the same job for 21 years. Trying new typefaces is one of the few sources of true excitement in my life.” The unifying parameters Bierut set for the poster designs were: a standard size (22 × 34 inches, folding to 8.5 × 11 inches for mailing); a single colour of ink, black, printed on white paper; a purely typographic treatment (no images); and each would be distinctively different. The collection of now over 65 posters is a typographic tour de force. Bierut, however, describes them as “simple” typographic solutions. “Each symposium is a poster. The ‘Open House’ posters are the simplest; the ‘Lecture’ posters are basically a quarterly calendar for the spring and fall; and we create a two-day calendar for most of the ‘Symposiums.’ The posters are not meant to endure.”

after las vegas A SYMPOSIUM Y A L E

Yale School of Architecture, Lectures, Symposium & Exhibitions 2000

Yale School of Architecture, Lectures, Symposium & Exhibitions 2012

Pentagram Design, New York, 2012

Art directors: Michael Bierut

Designer: Michael Bierut

Client: Yale University

Yale School of Architecture, Lectures, Symposium & Exhibitions 2010

Pentagram Design, New York, 2010

Art directors: Michael Bierut

Designer: Michael Bierut, Britt Cobb

Designer: Laitsz Ho

Client: Yale University

Yale School of Architecture, Structures of Light, 2010

Pentagram Design, New York, 2010

Art directors: Michael Bierut

Designer: Michael Bierut

Designer: Britt Cobb

Client: Yale University

Yale School of Architecture, Structures of Light, 2006

30 Years 90 Notebooks

5 Secrets from 86 Notebooks

Pentagram Design, New York, 2010

Art directors: Michael Bierut

Client: 99u Behance

Designer: Hamish Smyth Exhibition Designer: Tracey Cameron Client: College of Saint Rose

Conclusion The Blissfully on Target exhibition displays works from four unique periods of Michael Bierut’s life. Firstly The Student area exhibits works from Bierut’s Design portfolio and the publications and Designers that influenced his early design educations. Secondly The Prodigy Exhibits designs and publications produced while Michael worked under master modernist Massimo Vignelli and the influences Massimo had through the use of strict grid structure and the Vignelli style that made him famous. The third installation, The Partner Displays and discusses works and relationships from Michael Bierut’s current creative agency, Pentagram, of which he is a partner of the New York office. This is where Bierut’s release from the conformity of Vignelli design takes place and he reaches his design maturity. It will exhibit works completed for many big name clients and award winning solutions. The final installation is entitled The Teacher and displays the work Bierut produces for design universities and schools, with special focus on The Yale School of Architecture. This installation displays the inspirational impact Bierut has today on design students through his lectures and critique input.

Image Michael Bierut [photograph] (2011) Paralax Theatre ‘The Babysitter’ [poster] (2000) Michael Bierut [photograph] (2012) Michael Bierut [photograph] (2012) Portfolio Pieces [scans] (2007) Vignelli New York Subway Map [map] (2009) Mohawk Logo [logo] (2012) Mohawk Poster [logo] (2012) Mohawk Business Cards [photograph] (2012) Mohawk Paper [photograph] (2012) Nuts.com packaging [photograph] (2012) Nuts.com boxes [photograph] (2012) Nuts.com typeface [vector image] (2012) Saks Fifth Avenue Bags [photograph] (2006) Saks Fifth Avenue building [photograph] (2013) Saks Fifth Avenue logo [logo] (2007) MAD logo [logo] (2008) MAD poster [photograph] (2008) MAD bus advertising [photograph] (2008) MAD blocks [photograph] (2008) Simple poster [scan] (2008) Lightyears poster [scan] (2009) Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist [photograph] (2012) A Wilderness of Error [photograph] (2012) Yale Poster ‘Structure of Light’ [poster] (2010) 30 years 90 Notebooks [poster] (2011) Yale Poster ‘Viva Las Vegas’ [poster] (2010) Yale Poster ‘This Way to Fall’ [poster] (2010) Yale Posters ‘other [posters] (2010)

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