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.

From the identity system for SAM’s three locations.

The Seattle Art Museum is unique in that it is comprised of “one museum in three locations:” the downtown Seattle Art Museum; the Olympic Sculpture Park, recently built on an undeveloped piece of waterfront within walking distance of the museum; and the Seattle Asian Art Museum, located nearby in Volunteer Park. The identity unifies the three sites and creates a common, recognizable identifier: SAM. “The city already colloquially embraced ‘SAM’ as a moniker,” says Miller, “so we were able to use this friendly acronym as the framework for the three sites, allowing the Olympic Sculpture Park and the Asian Art Museum to function under the umbrella of the ‘Seattle Art Museum.’” The identity was launched with a capital campaign for the museum entitled “I Am SAM.”

Individual identities were designed for each venue by adding a signature to the acronym. The three signature lines separated by printer rules on the individual identities represent the three museums. The typeface Miller chose for the identity is the modern, sans serif Gotham because, as he says, “Its openness and elegance allowed us to create a bridge between the Art Deco style of the Seattle Asian Art Museum, the taut forms of the Allied Works SAM addition and the linear precision of the Weiss/Manfredi designed Olympic Sculpture Park. Gotham works across all three sites and serves to underline their affinities.”

Letterhead designed for SAM.

SAM’s stated mission is to integrate art into life and the new three-story exterior sign Miller designed for the downtown location is indicative of this goal. Situated on a busy street, the museum is flanked by neon signs. The new SAM sign, reminiscent of its neon neighbors, integrates the steel and glass curtain wall of the museum into the eclectic urban environment. Miller explains his inspiration for the signage: “I knew that a major sign would be required on the façade of the downtown expansion, and I liked the idea that the 1920s ‘commercial art’ flavor of Gotham could also visually connect with the neon signs you see in Seattle, particularly the famous ‘Public Market’ sign that signals the Pike Street Market, one of the greatest open-air markets anywhere in the world. If you’re standing at the public market, you can see the SAM letters down the block, and the relationship is unmistakable. The signage brings vitality to the street, and in some ways acclimates visitors to the concept of a very urban, vertical museum experience.”

Neon sign on the façade of the new museum addition.

The sign is evocative of the museum’s vernacular environment.

Signage for the museum’s new store and cafe.

This theme of integrating the signage into the materials and environment of the specific venue was carried over into the Olympic Sculpture Park, which opened in January and has transformed Seattle’s last undeveloped downtown waterfront property, a nine-acre industrial site on the Elliott Bay, into a free public park. The venue showcases outdoor sculptures set within several varied landscapes of Northwestern ecology and native plants. A pavilion at the park’s main entrance houses a public event space, cafe and amphitheater. Pentagram’s signage for the park incorporates directional and donor signage into the pathways and railings of the sculpture park, integrating the graphics into the natural surroundings. “The signage at the Sculpture Park,” says Miller, “integrates very closely with the landscape: donor signage will be installed over the next year that follows the plan of the park’s ‘zig-zag’ plan and approaches the signage as a single line of type that starts at the pavilion and runs through the park down to the water.”

Entry signage at the Olympic Sculpture Park pavilion.

OSP signage integrates with materials used in construction.

Signage for the Olympic Sculpture Park amphitheater.