I learned about Michael Bierut and the work of Pentagram when I started listening to Debbie Millman’s podcast about a year after graduating college. The breadth of people she spoke to opened my eyes to a whole new world of design and it was invigorating to say the least. It was only until I read his How To book a few days ago, that the breadth of his work with Pentagram really sunk in. I was floored by the amount of work that he touched, and that in turn had shaped my visual experiences as a child growing up in NYC. From the way-finding to the New York Times building, to the museums. I had always been attracted to visual identities, architecture, the whole gamut really, and to find that many that I had connected to were created by Bierut was flooring, to say the least. If nothing else, it was a reminder that of my undeniable attraction to well designed visual stimuli, and the effect that graphic design can have on the citizens experiencing it.
This piece here is one of the posters he had made for one the Yale School of Architecture open houses (source). There are countless pieces he had made for Yale, all of which are incredible, but the whimsy in this one was another reminder that it’s not just about how you arrange something on the page, but that adding weight to the content can give the piece a whole new character.
nonphiction 