How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things

by Michael Bierut

  When seeking the new, the question is: compared to what? Deconstructing the vintage Saks logo signaled change more effectively than inventing a new one. The jumbled puzzle was solved on each package by the inclusion of the whole logo in the baggusset or on the underside of the box lid. The logo pattern, wrapped around premade boxes at small scale, resembles houndstooth. Above and right A lighter and more graceful logo was redrawn by artist Joe Finocchiaro. Saks was looking for flexibility, so we divided the logo into 64 squares. Our designer Jena Sher’s fiancé was a physics PhD at Yale. He calculated that the squares could be arranged in more configura tions than there are particles in the known universe. 114 Saks Fifth Avenue 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 114 30/04/2015 14:0

  Below Some felt the dramatic collision of details, always in black and white, echoed the work of New York School artists like Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, and Ellsworth Kelly. My real inspiration was the typographic collages of Yale School of Art professor Norman Ives. Left top The new pattern complements the filigree of the flagship store’s classic architecture. Left bottom When the packaging was launched in 2007, Saks store windows diagrammed the new graphic program. Even without this help, shoppers quickly came to associate the new look with Saks. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 115 Next spread The logo pattern unifies the store’s block-long presence in midtown Manhattan. 115 30/04/2015 14:0

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  With the new look firmly established, Terron Schaefer commissioned a series of seasonal campaigns, each based on a different theme. We used this as an opportunity to stretch the brand’s basic premises, keeping certain elements constant (a black-and-white color scheme, the use of a square layout grid) while varying others. This provided a way to simultaneously refresh and reinforce the basic identity. Left Anders Overgaard’s photography for the fall 2010 “I’m going to Saks” campaign paired models with modes of transportation, from taxis to skateboards. Opposite The campaign was literally directional, with arrows guiding shoppers to the store. Designer Jennifer Kinon worked out the intricate patterns. 118 Saks Fifth Avenue 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 118 30/04/2015 14:0

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  Below “Think about…,” the spring 2010 campaign, was inspired by Diana Vreeland’s longtime Harper’s Bazaar column, “Why don’t you…” Each of the ten letters in the theme was associated with one of the ten catalogs Saks publishes each year. Right Pentagram’s Jennifer Kinon and Jesse Reed used tiny silhouettes to render the theme’s typography and tie each catalog back to its subject: animal prints, shoes, jewelry, men’s accessories, and so on. 120 Saks Fifth Avenue 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 120 30/04/2015 14:0

  Pentagram’s Katie Barcelona deployed the symbol in a range of hypnotic patterns. Below and right “At Saks,” the store’s campaign for fall 2011, reflected the rise of social media. Joe Finocchiaro created a custom @ symbol to match the Saks calligraphy. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 121 121 30/04/2015 14:0

  Above, right, and opposite Our last project for Saks, 2013’s “Look” campaign, was based on geometric letterforms that could be stacked, repeated, and used as windows. Designer Jesse Reed created a wide range of patterns that, as in each of our campaigns for this client, both extended the basic identity and demonstrated the identity’s capacity to surprise. 122 Saks Fifth Avenue 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 122 30/04/2015 14:0

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  How to cross cultures New York University Abu Dhabi Opposite and above An unprec- edented challenge, a new global campus for NYU in the Middle East, demanded an unprecedented response. By radically deconstructing the NYU torch, we merged the urban and the arabesque. In 2007, New York University’s dynamic and outspoken president, John Sexton, announced the next step in his vision to create what he called “the world’s first global university in the world’s first truly global city.” NYU Abu Dhabi would be much more than a typical study-abroad program. A complete campus, 40 acres of academic facilities and dormitories built from the ground up in Abu Dhabi’s cultural district on Saadiyat Island, it is designed to serve a projected 2,000 students and faculty members, bringing Western-style liberal arts education to this emerging world capital. Scattered among nearly 100 buildings in New York’s Greenwich Village and beyond, NYU is the quintessential urban university. Instead of a leafy quad ringed with stately neo-Georgian halls is a celebration of the messy vitality of the city. As a result, the university’s most important, if not only, means of coherence is its graphic design. We have worked with NYU for years, doing projects for its School of Law, Stern School of Business, and Wagner School of Public Service, and had come to appreciate the unifying power of its symbol, a simplified torch on a purple background. Now the power of this graphic identity would be put to a new test in Abu Dhabi. How could NYU use design to assert its global presence while celebrating this new local context? An institution’s graphic assets are usually inviolable. But in this case the most effective way to signal both continuity and change was to demonstrate what the NYU torch could do. Inspired by the dazzling chromatics and hypnotic repetition so typical of Islamic art, we created an arabesque pattern by expanding the university color palette and rotating and repeating the torch. This new signature motif, applied in print, online, and on campus, confirms that the new campus is at once part of New York University, of Abu Dhabi, and of the world. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 125 125 30/04/2015 14:0

  Right The brochure that introduced the new campus to potential students paired images from the two cultures. Above left New colors, complementing NYU’s purple, were meant to evoke (but not copy) the rich decorative traditions of Islamic art. Above right The NYU Abu Dhabi pattern is a familiar sight in the campus bookstore. The school has been overwhelmed with appli- cations, and has an accep- tance rate nearly as low as Harvard’s. 126 New York University Abu Dhabi 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 126 30/04/2015 14:0

  Above right Supporting John Sexton’s vision of a worldwide network, NYU Abu Dhabi maintains an active presence in Washington Square, the heart of the school’s New York campus. Above left Even before a single student was accepted, NYU Abu Dhabi had inaugurated a robust program of lectures, presentations, and symposia. Left The arabesque pattern provides decorative relief in campus architecture. Next spread Pentagram designer Katie Barcelona worked out an intricate set offormats for NYU Abu Dhabi’s broad suite of materials, using color, pattern, and typography to create a complex but coherent graphic program. 127 30/04/2015 14:01 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 12

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  How to behave in church The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine Above The cathedral, located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, has been under intermittent construction for over 100 years, and is still unfinished. It is one of New York’s most popular destinations. Opposite To unify the voice of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and to create a distinctive personality that no other institution could match, we asked typeface designer Joe Finocchiaro to redraw 1928’s Goudy Text, creating a proprietary font that we named “Divine.” 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 131 Organizations seeking an identity often think what they want is a logo. But this is like acquiring a personality by buying a hat. The way you look can be an important signal of who you are, but it’s not the only signal. More important is what you say and how you say it. And most important of all, of course, is what you do. The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine does remarkable things. It is the fourth largest Christian church building in the world, begun in 1892 and never finished, with a 124-foot-high nave that is a man
datory destination for tourists visiting New York. But more than a beautiful Gothic structure, St. John’s hosts concerts, art exhibits, and idiosyncratic events. Its soup kitchen serves 25,000 meals a year. And people from a wide range offaiths worship together in 30 services a week. What is the best way to signal that a stone monument over 120 years old is a vibrant, indispensable part of 21st-century life? We were mesmerized by this combination of old stones and modern life, and sought a way to replicate the surprise that visitors experience when they step through its great west doors. We started with a frankly contemporary, even humorous, tone of voice. But then we took that voice and set it in a new version of an old typeface: Divine, a redrawn, digitized version of a 1928 blackletter by Frederic Goudy, who in turn had based his designs on the type in Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible. This contrast between historical form and contemporary content became our way to echo the contrasting but symbiotic relationship of the container and the thing it contains. My boss Massimo Vignelli used to quote an old Italian saying, “Qui lo dico, e qui lo nego” (“Here I say it, here I deny it”). People are complex. So are organizations. The ability of graphic design to synthesize multiple, and sometimes contradictory, codes never fails to surprise me. 131 30/04/2015 14:0

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  Opposite St. John’s communica tions program combines contemporary language, lively layouts, bright colors, and its century-old typeface. Below The cathedral’s symbol is based on its stunning rose window, the largest in the United States. The wordmark, in contrast, is set in a simple sans serif typeface that subtly emphasizes its colloquial name. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 133 133 30/04/2015 14:0

  Above In late 2001, a fire that covered much of the cathedral’s interior with soot led to its first cleaning in 100 years. When it reopened, its grandeur newly restored, expressions of awe were common. 134 Above The Great Organ series is just one example of the many music programs held at this venue. This poster appropriates a slogan usually associated with Harley-Davidson riders. The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 134 30/04/2015 14:0

  Above A poster to promote the annual marathon reading of Dante’s Inferno held on Holy Week’s Maundy Thursday. Above Tightrope artist Philippe Petit has been the cathedral’s artist in residence since 1982. This poster promoted a benefit showing of the biographical movie Man on Wire. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 135 135 30/04/2015 14:0

  Left The identity carries through to digital applications, from desktop to mobile. Right For the cathedral’s 2012 exhibition The Value of Water, we rendered Goudy’s blackletter in liquid form. Right St. John’s communica tions director Lisa Schubert always seeks opportunities to surprise visitors. Each year, on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the cathedral convenes its traditional Blessing of the Animals. We created T-shirts to mark the event. 136 The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 136 30/04/2015 14:0

  Above and left Canine command- ments? The signs I created with Pentagram’s Jesse Reed to encourage visitors to respect the cathedral grounds have become attractions in their own right. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 137 137 30/04/2015 14:0

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  How to disorient an architect Yale University School of Architecture Opposite The posters for Yale use hundreds of typefaces but only one color: black. Above My original presentation to Robert A. M. Stern contrasted what was expected (classicism) with what we delivered (eclecticism). 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 139 “I want to surprise people.” Robert A. M. Stern was being watched, and he knew it. He was the newly appointed dean of the Yale University School of Architecture, from where he had graduated in 1965. Expectations were running high, and so were suspicions. As editor of Perspecta, the school’s student magazine, he had been an early promoter of the then-radical postmodernist theories of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. He took up the practice himself as an idealistic young designer in New York City. 35 years later, he was one of the most successful architects in the world, effortlessly moving between Shingle Style vacation homes for millionaires and impeccably detailed dormitories for Georgian Revival college campuses. But Stern’s mastery of the language of architectural history was a red flag for some of his modernist colleagues, one of whom had already dismissed him as a “suede-loafered sultan of suburban retrotecture.” Would he remake Yale into a 21st-century Beaux-Arts finishing school? Stern relished the prospect of overturning expectations. The school had been dormant too long, predictable and easy to ignore, he told me in 1999. He laid out an aggressive program of lectures, exhibitions, and symposia, filled with complexity and contradiction, and asked me to create a graphic program to broadcast it to the world. It was an intimidating challenge. Stern’s previous appointment was at Columbia University, in a program famous for a long-running series of posters designed by Swiss-born Willi Kunz, which used only a single typeface family, Univers. They were immediately identifiable and impossible to compete with. What single typeface could possibly sum up Stern’s agile eclecticism? The answer seems obvious in retrospect. Instead of using a single typeface, I proposed never using the same typeface twice: a graphic system that would achieve consistency through diversity. Fifteen years in and counting, including encounters with a few fonts I may never use again (cf. Brush Script, Robert E. Smith, 1942), our posters for Yale Architecture still surprise even me. 139 30/04/2015 14:0

  Right and opposite Stern has turned Yale’s architecture program into a hothouse of activity, with an overstuffed calendar of events emphasizing contrasting points of view. Next spread Each year, posters announce the school’s fall and spring program of events. How many different ways can we find to present the same information? 140 Yale University School of Architecture 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 140 30/04/2015 14:0

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  Right and opposite Designing posters for symposia is an opportunity to make direct references to specific subject matter, including the density of urban life, the architecture of Charles Moore, the signage of the Las Vegas strip, the lost art of drawing, or the legacy of George Nelson. 144 Yale University School of Architecture 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 144 30/04/2015 14:0

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  Right and opposite Each year, Yale holds an open house for prospective architecture students. Many of the accompanying posters have exploited the geometry of the letter Y or the implied invitation of the letter O. 146 Yale University School of Architecture 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 146 30/04/2015 14:0

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  Right Our clients at Yale have been remarkably tolerant. When we proposed a poster using only one size of type (the smallest), and indicating emphasis with cues like bold weight and underlines, they acqui- esced, and politely asked us not to do it again. 148 Yale University School of Architecture 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 148 30/04/2015 14:0

  Right I asked Marian Bantjes to hand-letter a poster on seduction in architecture, specifying a treatment that was “sick with lust.” She delivered. In a bizarre turn of events, the design was stolen by P. Diddy’s fashion label; with a few deft changes, they changed “Seduction” to “Sean John.” How strange and wonderful to live in a world with such porous borders. 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 149 149 30/04/2015 14:0

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  Left To reinforce the theme of constant variation, the logo for the school is a Y in a circle, but a different Y each time. Here it appears as a Rorschach blot. Next spread The posters for Yale are a favorite project in the studio
, and countless designers and interns on my team have contributed to them over the past 15 years, most notably Kerrie Powell, Michelle Leong, Yve Ludwig, Laitsz Ho, and Jessica Svendsen. John Jacobson at Yale has supervised the work from the start. And, of course, my greatest thanks go to Robert A. M. Stern, whose support has been continuous and inspiring throughout my career. 151 30/04/2015 14:01 00882_Bierut_CS5.5_PENTAGRAM_02.indd 15

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