Michael Bierut- Taelyn O'Keefe

“Most processes leave out the stuff no one wants to talk about: magic, intuition and leaps of faith.”

–Michael Bierut

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“Simplicity, wit, and good typography.”

— Michael Bierut

“On August 26, 2013, 31 years after the first, I started notebook number 100. How I would love to fill 100 more.”

– Michael Bierut

Dazzleship Battleships Product Design

Process Michael Bierut is one of the leading graphic designers in his field. He joined Pentagram after ten years working at Vignelli Associates. While working at Vignelli Associates he noticed that people didn’t want to read the annual reports and corporate brochures. This is where he changed his work to create content that people want to read. It is also here that one of the most important parts of his process began: his notebook obsession. Bierut refers to his notebooks as a habit or a compulsion and has stated, “I cannot walk into a meeting or start a phone call without my notebook.” His notebooks contain not only design ideas and drawings but are mostly filled with to do lists, reminders, and budgets.

These notebooks not only help him to remember things later but are also the precursor to some of his best ideas.

Penguin Random House Brand Identity

It’s All Our Blood Poster

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“The reason I became a designer is because I wanted people to come to me with problems that I could solve.”

– Michael Bierut Problem solving Bierut and his pentagram team were commissioned to design a sign for the New York Times building. Times Square zoning mandates that the signs have to be large and stuck on to the outside of the building. Bierut was “faced with the problem of how you put a big sign on the outside of a glass building without blocking any body’s view.” The solution was to place pieces of aluminum sleeve over the buildings sunscreen rods. This broke the logo up into nearly a thousand pieces. The employees inside can see out through the sign while pedestrians see a solid logo. The sign is 110 ft long. The New York Times logo is set as a 10,116-point version of the newspaper’s signature Fraktur font.

Below is a close up of the teardrop shaped aluminum sleeves over the sunscreen rods on the New York Times building.

Street view of the New York Times sign

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“Canine commandments?

The signs...have become attractions in their own right.”

– Michael Bierut Humor Pentagram was commissioned to make signs for Saint John’s Cathedral. This was one project that strongly shows the playful side of Bierut’s process. The cathedral is a popular walking spot for dogs. The goal was to make signs addressing cleaning up after the dogs and keeping them on leashes. They used the custom font Divine, a redrawn version of Frederic Goudy’s 1928 Blackletter for the branding of these signs. This was part of the identity they designed for the cathedral. The font not only fits the architecture of the building but also enhances the eye-catching playful nature of the signs and the humor of their words. The humor contained in these signs has become a signature for the cathedrals identity. This style and humor has spread across the cathedrals many other projects.

Signs made for Saint John’s Cathedral

Humor The New York Times and Pentagram strove to “reinforce the unique Times culture through as many details as possible.” “every bathroom sign, every back-ofhouse sign, every public room sign bears a different image culled from the paper’s immense photographic archive.” The Times welcomed a sense of humor and black and white photographs were picked out that wittily corresponded to each rooms function.

The signs are 6" x 6" with a vinyl printed photograph on either a glass, plexiglass, or metal backing.

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“No one loves authenticity like a graphic designer.

And no one is quite as good at simulating it.”

— Michael Bierut

“Within two years, Nuts. com’s sales had increased by 50 percent: the power of good design driven by authentic, nutty personality.”

– Michael Bierut Design as Storytelling Bierut was hired to create a new identity and packaging for Nuts. com, an Online retailer of nuts, dried fruit, snacks, chocolate, coffee and tea. Nuts.com uses “a personal approach and has always used a friendly, personable, slightly zany tone of voice in its marketing.” Beirut’s custom hand-lettering became the font nutcase that is used in the identity.

The brands humorous/ friendly personality and story is reflected in nutcase. This also comes through in the packagings bright colors, fun illustrations, and the chatty typography on the box.

Bierut’s handwritten font that shows off the brands crazy personality

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Process Pentagram was asked to contribute to the l!brary initiative by the Robin Hood Foundation. This was formed to help the children in the New York City school system. The goal was to build new school libraries. “librarian Joanne Davis told the Times, ‘A lot of students here have never been in a school library or even a public library.’” Architects were brought in to design the libraries while private companies donated books and funds. Pentagram was asked to provide the graphic design, which included signage, wayfinding, and a master brand to tie all the sites together. Michael started the task of designing a logo for the library’s. He started with the idea that the libraries were a new idea that needed a new name.

One of the L!brary logos used in New York schools

“What I wanted to do was dispel the idea that these were musty old libraries� – Michael Bierut Rejected Ideas His logo ideas got rejected as the kids had never really seen a library before so instead of giving it a new name they decided to call it just a library. He decided to give it an exclamation point at the end so it was Library!. From there he moved it into the I so he had L!brary. It was simple, clear, and could be made and used by anyone. This was the idea that got accepted.

The logos on the left are the unused library logo ideas.

The one below is the final design

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“26 Years, 85 Notebooks.” Design Observer. AIGA. October 12, 2008.

Accessed April 24, 2018. https://designobserver.com/feature/26-years85-notebooks/6067 Bierut, Michael. How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and (every Once in a While) Change the World. London: Thames & Hudson, 2016.

Bierut, Michael. Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2012.

Bierut, Michael. “How to Design a Library That Makes Kids Want to Read,” TEDNYC | March 2017. TED video, 12:27, https://www.ted. com/talks/michael_bierut_how_to_design_a_library_that_makes_kids_ want_to_read#t-734403 “Michael Bierut’s Notebooks.” The New York Times. October 06, 2015. Accessed April 24, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/ slideshow/2015/10/06/t-magazine/michael-bieruts-notebooks/ s/06tmag-bierut-slide-OVXN.html.

“Simplicity, Wit, and Good Typography.” Eye on Design. March 26, 2016. Accessed April 24, 2018. https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/designquote-michael-bierut-simplicity-wit-good-typography/.

“The World’s Largest Independent Design Consultancy.” Pentagram.

Accessed April 24, 2018. https://www.pentagram.com/.

Walker, Alissa. “2006 AIGA Medalist: Michael Bierut.” AIGA | the Professional Association for Design. March 1, 2006. Accessed April 24, 2018. https://www.aiga.org/medalist-michaelbierut.

Designed and written by Taelyn O’Keefe Composed in Helvetica, typeface designed by Max Miedinger & Eduard Hoffmann in 1957. Composed in DIN Alternate, typeface designed by Albert-Jan Pool in 1995.

Printed from a Big Gray printer onto Hammermill 80# text.

Copyright © 2018 Taelyn O’Keefe, Portland, Maine, Maine College of Art

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