is smart enough to know what he or she thinks about my work, and brave enough to tell me. (My least favorite reaction is something noncommittal like “Hmm.. you've given us all a lot to think about!” I have been really lucky to have many clients who have been smarter than me. I have never missed an opportunity to learn from them. The very best are inspiring and are really just as responsible for my success as I am.
How would you define a designer who is well suited for Pentagram?
Each partner here is responsible for hiring the designers who will work on his or her own team, so there's no one answer to this. Some of us hire almost entirely on portfolio and craft skills. Others look for designers who can work with clients and take on project management roles. So the designers are different. Because we work in an open-plan office – no one has offices, not even the partners – everyone has to get along and work well with others. Because the teams are small, we all tend to work quickly and look for people who can do a lot of different things. This is not a place for those who want to close their office door and work quietly on one thing all day.
Windham-Campbell Prizes Program
Yale University, The Donald Windham-Sandy Campbell Literature Prizes
Designers: Michael Bierut, Jessica Svendsen
Illustrator/photographer
Pentagram
2013
What do you look for in an assistant or associate designer, given the current requirements?
I look for people who love typography, who love to read, who have a good sense of humor, and who just plain love graphic design as much as I do.
What job that you've recently completed would you say is the most satisfying and challenging?
Last year we did a series of projects for the New York City Department of Transportation that included a city-wide pedestrian wayfinding system, maps for the city's new bike share program, and redesigning New York's parking signs. All of these are being rolled out now, and I have to say that every time I see a new one out on the street – and I usually just encounter one by accident, or someone on my team does and takes a picture – it's just a great surprise. This kind of work is really complicated. We were part of a much larger team of planners, cartographers, product designers, and engineers. Yet the results of the work are simple: every day, for instance, I see someone looking at one of those maps to find their way around town. Being responsible for something that is playing a role, a positive role, in people's lives is really satisfying. The fact that most people can't even imagine that they are looking at the final outcome of a tremendously complex design process makes the whole thing even more gratifying.
A Wilderness of Error by Errol Morris
The Penguin Press
Designers:
Michael Bierut, Yve Ludwig
Illustrator/photographer
Pentagram
2012
Graphic design is no longer just graphic design. How do you explain today's profession?
I know that people tend to have an expansive idea of what graphic design is, but I tend to come back to a definition that isn't that different than what it would have been when I first picked up that copy of Aim for a Future in Graphic Design, 40 years ago: graphic designers combine words and pictures to convey a message. The way we combine them has changed, and the messages are always changing, but I still think the basic challenge is the same.
Cathedral of St. John the Divine Signs
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
Designer:
Michael Bierut, Jesse Reed
Illustrator/photographer
Pentagram
October 2013
What's next for you?
I don't know, but I hope it will be a surprise.
Stephen Doyle
On Being Selfish – in a Good Way
Stephen Doyle, proprietor of Doyle and Partners in New York, admits that he began studying graphic design because he got thrown out of his painting classes at Cooper Union and needed more credits to graduate. “But I liked it,” he notes. “The idea of design as a storytelling medium was much more appealing than painting as a means of self-expression, especially since my version was not being tolerated by the guys deciding pass or fail.” His first job was as a designer at Esquire magazine, under his teacher Milton Glaser. “I think he hired me because he confused me with another kid, but I loved reading articles and then translating them for the reading public by making layouts that were responsive to and expressive of the content.” Thirty-five years later, Doyle is still telling stories, but now in more public ways and in a wider range of media.
Truth
Illustrator: Stephen Doyle
Client: The New York Times, Op-Ed
Art Director: Nicholas Blechman
2001
You've had your own studio for close to three decades. What is the key distinction between then and now?
Having run a studio for 28 years, it is interesting to observe that even though our media and processes have changed exponentially, we are still working within a conceptual sensibility that is true to our starting point. Our work tries to hover in a zone of humanism and sparkle, never addressing vast audiences or demographics, but rather seeking to engage just one person at a time, with a wink or a gesture, or, if we're lucky, a little moment of wonder. Having a small studio allows us to be selective about the work we take on, and one of our mantras is to try to take on projects that only we can perfectly solve. We are less interested now in graphic design per se but chase the grail of engagement and pleasant surprise.
Are you in fact freer now to do the projects that most appeal to you, or do you have to keep the studio fed?
Another advantage of a small studio of 10 is that we get to consciously push away from work that might lie in our comfort zone. If we have a track record of breakthrough mass-market packaging, our instinct is to search out projects that need environmental graphics or to create a video for a conference. That's what makes it worthwhile – and scary to get up every morning. Frontiers!
Is the studio a creative expression of your sensibility or not?
Someone who I'm married to once commented that my way of practicing design was completely “selfish. But, um, selfish in a good way,” she backtracked. Pressed, she clarified that I had a way of hoodwinking my clients into being “patrons” – people who finance my explorations into art and unwittingly sponsor
