Saks and the City

Saks in the streets. Photo by Elizabeth Bierut.

Alice Rawsthorn interviews Michael Bierut about the Saks Fifth Avenue identity in T: The New York Times Style Magazine. There are eight million stories in the Naked City; there are 98.14 googol variations in this identity.

“We wanted something that would be immediately identifiable across the street or through the windows of a moving subway car, and that no one would throw away, ” Bierut says. “Blowing up the logo and rearranging the fragments in a million different ways on a grid made the identity much more dramatic.”

Regardless of whether it’s on Fifth Avenue or in the Houston Galleria Mall, Saks is a definitive New York store; the grid refers to the city’s street plan, and the fragments represent the frenzy of its street life. “It’s a metaphor for the larger-than-life experiences you can find on block after block in New York City,” Bierut says. “Though I really don’t expect anyone to notice that. If a Saks customer spontaneously spots the subtext, I’ll send them a gift voucher.”