MOCA! New York Museum of Chinese in America

Museum of Chinese in America's new home at 215 Centre Street in New York's Chinatown. Photo credit: Pentagram.

I like the new identity program of New York Museum of Chinese in America: MOCA.
It is designed by Pentagram with this Project Team: Michael Bierut, partner-in-charge and designer; Yve Ludwig, designer (identity and signage); Rion Byrd-Gumus, designer (signage).

NEW MUSEUM BUILDING. During the past year, MOCA celebrated its first anniversary in its new home designed by the architect Maya Lin. She's done remarkable things from sculpture to architecture to landscape design. This post however is about Pentagram's identity work, though we may need some background about the museum itself.

WHAT IS MOCA. I quote from Pentagram's web pres:
- Founded in 1980 as a project to commemorate the history of New York’s Chinatown, the museum has grown over the years and is now recognized as an important national institution. In 2009 the museum relocated to a space at 215 Centre Street, a 12,000 square-foot former industrial machine repair shop on the border of Chinatown and Soho. After many years at 70 Mulberry Street, a location it shared with other community groups (and where it still maintains a Collections and Research Center), the move to the new space marked the institution’s growing confidence and optimism.

NEW IDENTITY. Here is how the identity program is presented:
- Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and Yve Ludwig designed an elegant new identity for MOCA that takes its cues from Lin’s architecture. The square logos—one the museum’s full name, the other the acronym—work in combination with their typical “chop” in Chinese characters, which the designers also modified. The word “Chinese” (or, in the acronym version, the letter C) is marked with a color shift to emphasize the museum’s focus. The same square motif recurs in other layout elements and the signage. Like the space itself, the identity and graphics avoid any overt references to the clichés of Chinese or Asian culture. Instead, the identity is meant to be a neutral frame, with the subject matter of the museum’s collections and exhibitions providing the specific and authentic content. The font Verlag is used throughout.

http://pentagram.com/en/new/2011/02/new-work-museum-of-chinese-in.php

Visuelt days in Oslo 6-7 May 2010

For two days, a bunch of graphic designers and illustrators and other interested people met in Oslo for the annual Visuelt event offered by Grafill (association for graphic designers and illustrators in Norway). The seminar was arranged in Vika Cinema and included welcome speeches, several visual screenings and a range of interesting presenters, many from international agencies and collectives. On Friday evening, it was time for the annual Visuelt Award Ceremony in Christiania Theatre. A number of awards (so many subcategories!) and much praise was shared with an enthusiastic audience as also the after-awards party time got closer.

You can see more here: ............(links to come)

http://bit.ly/9qfRoD

Taking a sabbatical - designer Stefan Sagmeister

Courtesy to TED and Sagmeister.
Filmed July 2009, posted on TED talks Oct 2009.
Link (if problem with the video here): http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off.html

Norwegian Form's Jacob prize 2009: Egil Haraldsen

Credit images/photos:
to the left - Roberto Di Trani, Norsk Form
in the middle and right - Egil Haraldsen, Norsk Form

Do you have a Dag Solstad book or another "October" book near you? Then it probably is Egil Haraldsen and Ellen Lindeberg in Exil design who designed its bookcover.

JACOB PRIZE. This week graphic designer Egil Haraldsen (b. 1952) received Norway's highest award for design and architecture, the Jacob prize, for his long achievements in visual design fields. Haraldsen has created and cocreated numerous book covers and cinema posters and served many clients well through creative collaboration over decades. He has also contributed to expressions beyond the brief and conventions.

EXAMPLE. Working recurrently with Solstad, a distinguished, contemporary writer, Egil Haraldsen is given considerable freedom, he tells Oslo's newspaper Aftenposten after the prize ceremony. It is worth noticing that Haraldsen for instance came up with the idea himself to put 'Dag Solstad', the author's name in parenthesis on the book cover, an interesting angle to Solstad's excellent and self-reflective authorship. See book cover above, from Eleventh novel, book eighteen.

Excerpt from interview with Norsk Form (in Norwegian):
- Hva er et godt bokomslag?
- Det må ville noe. Ikke være et forventet tapet, et gjesp. Det må skille seg ut, ha en idé, tanke, innfallsvinkel.

Det er ikke alltid lett. Haraldsen forteller at på slutten av 80-tallet ble designet temmet. Da begynte markedsavdelingene og forfatterne å ta mer kontroll.

- Forfattere er blitt opphøyd til guder. Noen ganger kan de komme med bilde og fonttype.
- Det er deprimerende at yrket designer ikke nyter mer respekt. Folk finner aldri på å krangle med en rørlegger eller skomaker. Men de krangler med en designer.
See full interview text in Norsk Form's website (see link below) by Katharina Dale Håkonsen.

JURY STATEMENT. Here is the jury statement (in NORWEGIAN):
Egil Haraldsen debuterte i 1983 etter utdannelse fra Grafisk avdeling/SHKS, og han har i et kvart århundre vært en av de virkelig toneangivende innen norsk bokdesign. Han driver eget
designstudio i Oslo – Exil design – og arbeider med grafisk design for kulturfeltet, hovedsaklig med bøker, filmplakater og tidsskrifter.
De fleste hjem har et utvalg av hans arbeider. Haraldsen har designet omslag for forfattere som
Dag Solstad, Kjell Askildsen, Tove Nielsen, Knut Faldbakken og Edvard Hoem. Han har definert
den visuelle profilen til forlaget Oktober og har også arbeidet med bokdesign og omslag for en
rekke andre forlag som Pax, Gyldendal, Cappelen, Aschehoug, Tiden, Kolon og Humanist.
Egil Haraldsens solide produksjon representerer en konvensjonell typografisk tradisjon og
presisjon. Samtidig søker han det ukonvensjonelle ved sin eksperimentering og reflekterte relasjon til samtid og subkultur. Hans repertoar er fra det sublime og rent typografiske til det fotografisk- illustrative og koloristisk eksessive. Egil representerer selvsikkerhet og distinkt egenart kombinert med respekt for det unike i tekst og kontekst for hvert prosjekt. Bøkene for Oktober og filmplakatene til Arthaus er utmerkede eksempler på organiske visuelle identiteter som vokser fram på grunn av langvarig, nært og respektfullt forhold mellom designer og oppdragsgiver. Kulturprodukter trenger ikke merkevarestrategi, men kvalitetsbevisst, kløktig og variert innholdsformidling som trigger sanser og nysgjerrighet.
Haraldsen er faglig fundamentalist, en vakthund for typografihåndverket, for viktigheten av
bokstavenes billedlegging av språket og en streng kritiker av faglig slapphet og selvtilfredshet. I hans debatterende og kverulerende ærlighet og satiriske humor ligger det en blod-alvorlig insistering på faglig kvalitet, kompetanse, meningsfylde, ærlighet og arbeidsmoral.
Egil Haraldsen øker tilgjengeligheten og livskvaliteten for et lesende, seende og tenkende
publikum, inspirerer kunder og samarbeidspartnere og er et utfordrende forbilde for grafiske
designere i alle aldre.

«Design oder nicht sein!»

(Source: via Norsk Form 19.11.2009. http://www.norskform.no/

See also a good interview in Aftenposten, by Thorleif Andreassen,
http://www.aftenposten.no/kul_und/article3382354.ece
Accessed 21.11.2009