Paula Scher Illustrates Domenic Lippa’s Views on Printing

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New Work: ‘Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand’

Today photography is recognized as an established and influential art form, but 100 years ago the medium was struggling to be accepted as a traditional fine art. In the years between the turn of the 20th century and the beginning of World War I, photography’s “Big Three”—Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Paul Strand—helped legitimize the medium. Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand at the Metropolitan Museum of Art documents this pioneering period in an exhibition of 115 photographs drawn from the Met’s permanent collection. Pentagram’s Abbott Miller has designed the catalogue for the landmark exhibition, on view at the Met through April 10.

Alfred Stieglitz’s gift of 22 photographs in 1928 was the Met’s first acquisition of photography, and the photographer had a long relationship with the museum, later donating over 400 works made by various photographers of the period including Steichen and Strand. Today the Alfred Stieglitz Collection is a core of the Met’s photography holdings, and “Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand” includes many of the museum’s masterpieces.

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Abbott Miller to Speak at Cornell AAP Symposium

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Pentagram to Collaborate on National Museum of African American History and Culture

Pentagram is excited to announce that we are a member of the exhibition design team led by Ralph Appelbaum Associates for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Designers & Books Featured on The New Yorker’s Book Bench Blog

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Pentagram Is One of Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Design

Quick Link: Pentagram Is One of Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Design

New Work: First Things

The past year marked the start of an exciting new presentation for First Things, the journal published 10 times a year by the Institute on Religion and Public Life. Pentagram’s Luke Hayman and Shigeto Akiyama have significantly redesigned the ecumenical journal, an interdenominational publication disseminating Institute news, intellectual essays and poetry.

The cover of each new issue now features a striking ink drawing by illustrator Leanne Shapton set against a deep solid ground color, replacing the former text only cover. The journal logo has been redesigned with a custom-tailored font to evoke traditional handcrafted lettering one might find in a church.

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Lovers’ Lane

Tonight, when taking your significant other out for Valentine’s Day, know that a full 15 percent of people have admitted to having sex while driving. This is one of the fun facts illustrated by Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and Hamish Smyth for a feature in this month’s issue of Men’s Health magazine. The designers collaborated with Men’s Health contributing designer Bradley R. Hughes on the visuals for the magazine’s statistics section, “The Above-Average Guy.” Each month the magazine asks a designer or illustrator to come up with a theme and create images to illustrate the data. For the February edition, part of the magazine’s “Hot Issue,” we created road signs illustrating various statistics about men and driving.

When you hop in the car with your beau, you could be in for a long ride: The average distance men drive in a year is 16,920 miles. See the complete feature after the jump.

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New Work: Yale Glee Club

Thanks to the television show “Glee,” school glee clubs are experiencing unprecedented popularity. One of the oldest—and best—is the Yale Glee Club, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this weekend with a gala reunion in New Haven, CT. Seventy-five years of alumni will attend, with members ranging from the class of 1939 through the class of 2014.

Founded in 1861, the Yale Glee Club is the third oldest collegiate chorus in the country. The group sets standards for choral repertory—it helped introduce spirituals, folk songs and classical music to the glee canon—and has toured all over the world. Noted alumni include Vincent Price, William Sloane Coffin, Prescott Bush, Charles Ives and Cole Porter, whose “Bull Dog” remains one of Yale’s favorite fight songs.

Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and Yve Ludwig have designed “Louder Yet the Chorus Raise!,” an illustrated history published to commemorate the landmark anniversary. Written and researched by Glee Club alumnus Timothy J. DeWerff (Yale ’92), the book is lavishly produced, and the designers faced the challenge of weaving together over 200 images of Glee Club ephemera, 32 personal recollections, and sheet music for 16 favorite Yale songs, from “Gaudeamus igitur,” the first entry in the first Yale songbook (1853), to “Raise Your Voices Here,” a new song composed for the anniversary by current Yale Glee Club director Jeffrey Douma. A four-part appendix lists the club’s discography, tours, songbook and members from 1861 to 2011, and the book includes 2 CDs of performances from throughout the group’s history.

The book will be available to Glee Club alums at this weekend’s reunion and to the public this spring. The Yale Glee Club will perform a 150th Anniversary Concert at Carnegie Hall in April.

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New Work: BankUnited

Pentagram’s work for BankUnited presents a new kind of case study: a financial brand wholly reborn after the recent economic crisis. Luke Hayman and Paula Scher have created a new identity for BankUnited that positions the consumer and commercial bank for continued success and future growth.

Founded in 1984, BankUnited was the biggest bank in Florida—and one of the largest banks to collapse in the financial crisis of 2007-2010. Focused on residential real estate, the bank succumbed to the risky adjustable-rate mortgages that contributed to the failure of over 300 banks in the crisis. In 2009 the FDIC sold the failed bank to a group of investors, and the new BankUnited was reborn as a startup.

The recapitalized BankUnited has since become one of the most profitable and well-capitalized financial institutions in the U.S. The company has been restructured from the top down and its employees consolidated in a new headquarters in Miami Lakes. The rebirth was capped on January 28 with a highly successful IPO, the first brought by a bank resurrected from the financial crisis. BankUnited now has more than 80 branches in 13 Florida counties, with plans to open 7 new locations and eventually expand beyond the current footprint.

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