Abbott Miller’s Ink Collection for KnollTextiles Featured in Fast Company

Quick Link: Abbott Miller’s Ink Collection for KnollTextiles Featured in Fast Company

New Work: Ink Collection for KnollTextiles

When Pentagram’s Abbott Miller was commissioned to design a new collection of wallcoverings for KnollTextiles—his second for the manufacturer—he looked to material close at hand: drawings and patterns of ink he found himself working with on paper.

“I was looking at the way ink moves across paper, and imagined it running down the walls,” says Miller.

Launching this week, the new collection, called Ink, uses liquid movement as a point of departure for a series of highly graphic patterns. The idea behind the design came from experimentation; starting with a single drop of ink, Miller created hundreds of studies that yielded drops, branch-like forms, and loosely formed letters. This was the genesis of the collection’s three patterns, aptly named Drip, Drop and Run.

The new collection follows the highly successful Grammar wallcovering series Miller created for Knoll in 2006. Grammar was inspired by typography and consisted of geometric patterns based on a series of overlapping, intermingling letters. The Ink collection is more loose, organic and handmade, but also has a digital element—the collection was created by digitally composing the studies into patterns.

Miller says, “As a medium, ink has a quality that is free and organic, but a graphic pattern is tight and controlled. The new collection plays with this dichotomy.”

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New Work: Vignelli Gala at the Architectural League

On the evening of Tuesday, March 8, The Architectural League gave its President’s Medal to Lella and Massimo Vignelli. The award (past recipients of which include John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Hugh Ferriss, Joseph Urban, Richard Meier, Robert A.M. Stern, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown) was given to the Vignellis “in recognition of a body of work so influential in its breadth that it has shaped the very way we see the world.” The setting was a gala evening in midtown Manhattan attended by nearly 300 colleagues, friends and admirers of the guests of honor. Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, an Architectural League vice president who began his career over 30 years ago as a junior designer at Vignelli Associates, designed the evening’s program. With five different covers featuring five different classic Vignelli quotes (in Helvetica, of course) printed in PMS Super Warm Red (the couple’s favorite color), the programs were the perfect table settings for a memorable evening.

Closer views of the five Vignelli-isms and a portrait of one of the guests of honor after the jump.

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Lisa Strausfeld Announces New Data Viz Venture

After a decade as a partner, Lisa Strausfeld is leaving Pentagram to embark on a new phase of her career as an entrepreneur of information-based projects.

Strausfeld’s first venture is Major League Politics, an online startup with the goal of making government activity as engaging and addictive as sports. The project is one that Strausfeld has been thinking about for years.

“Thanks to the Open Government Directive, today we have unprecedented access to government data,” says Strausfeld. “That, combined with a rising literacy and interest in information visualization and an increased urgency for public engagement with government over the past few years has motivated me to finally make this vision of what I call ‘civic entertainment’ a reality.”

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New Work: St. Petersburg/Clearwater

Florida has been the tourist destination of choice for East Coasters since the early part of the 20th century. In recent decades it’s become a global destination as well, drawing many visitors from Europe and Asia. For many people, the icons of Florida are “Deco and Disney”—the Art Deco hotels of South Miami Beach and the theme park complexes around Orlando.

The gulf coast, however, has its own substantial appeal, particularly the towns and beaches around St. Petersburg and Clearwater that sit between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The resort communities of St. Pete/Clearwater have traded prizes for “Best Beach in America” several times over the past decade, and the area boasts the record for consecutive sunny days—an incredible 768, or over two years. Small, idiosyncratic nearby towns like Gulfport, Dunedin, and Tarpon Springs provide a welcome bit of authenticity in a state dominated by fantasy and artifice. Long a winter haven for frozen Midwesterners, St. Pete/Clearwater is increasingly the vacation spot of choice for sun worshippers from all over the country and around the world.

The St. Petersburg/Clearwater Convention & Visitors Bureau, under the direction of D.T. Minich and David Downing, has stewarded an ongoing transformation of the area’s image, working notably with ad agency BVK on a series of promotions that have been ubiquitous through the last few brutal New York winters. One piece, however, remained undone, and a year ago, they approached Pentagram to redesign their logo. The new mark is out just in time for spring break.

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Luke Hayman to Speak at Abstract Design Conference

Quick Link: Luke Hayman to Speak at Abstract Design Conference

Paula Scher in Conversation with Dana Arnett for Design Indaba

Quick Link: Paula Scher in Conversation with Dana Arnett for Design Indaba

Eddie Opara Interviewed on “Design Matters”

Quick Link: Eddie Opara Interviewed on “Design Matters”

Spring Bloom

March is in like a lion! Today’s winds are particularly fond of the new flag that has unfurled on the façade of our New York office. Designed by Eddie Opara, the banner pictures a large letter P that wends a path through a field of hundreds of smaller Ps.

Additional views after the jump, and check out some of our previous office banners here.

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The Architectural League of New York Presents “Drinks with a Designer” at Pentagram

Quick Link: The Architectural League of New York Presents “Drinks with a Designer” at Pentagram