MAD about design

Pentagram has done so much great design work—and makes so much of it look so simple and easy—one can forget how difficult and rare great design is.

I love the stuff they’ve done for the brand new Museum of Arts and Design, located in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. I've been seeing it around town and I find it very eye-catching.

Here’s a series of sketches done by Pentagram's Michael Beirut as well as some produced pieces.




Read the story behind the work and see tons and tons of examples (a pretty astonishing amount of work) here.

Learn more about MAD at their website.

And if you’re into this stuff, I recommend Michael Beirut’s Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design. (Interestingly, the book weighs more than you’d think, a detail that adds a certain something to the experience. These guys think of everything.)

Exploration of a disaster

The Denver Egotist revisited the Oklahoma City Thunder logo today in a post that includes a break down of the logo design by someone named Bubba (not his real name).


It’s quite entertaining and can be seen here.

This logo is yawn-derful

I was going to begin this post by joking that the NBA’s D League had unveiled the name and logo for a new team. But after looking at the logo designs for D League teams (that’s D as in development—the D League is to the NBA what minor league baseball is to the MLB), I’ve decided that’s an inaccurate and harsh comparison.

Those D League logos are much better than this.


This, of course, is the new look for the Oklahoma City Thunder (né Seattle SuperSonics) of the NBA. It's too bad, because nothing about this logo says "thunder" to me. It does say "circa 1985" though.

Anyone wanna wager on the NBA team with the least fan apparel revenue this season?

I guess a more sports-appropriate theme song is the only thing the team (and fans) can hope for at this point. (I never was a fan of J.J. Fad.)


Courtesy of the Denver Egotist.

I spy

During last Sunday’s return trip from Portland I saw these two remarkable things and took pictures of them* so I could share them with you.

Picture 1: Ugly bus


What’s the deal with this bus? The back is an ad for some bathroom fixture supplier or something. Hard to say. The side is an ad for Washington Mutual. What ad unit is that? It looks like the band of seaweed on a piece of nigiri sushi. This bus is an advertising media travesty.

(By the way, the grammarian in me struggles with this ad’s headline: “To overdraft is human. To waive one is WaMulian.” Referencing a verb as though it were a noun—just because the word can be both—bugs me. But I’ll live.)

Picture 2: Yellow ribbon


Because of the military bases in the area, you’ll see plenty of yellow ribbon stickers and red-white-and-blue ribbon stickers (or are they magnets?) on vehicles south of Seattle. This one caught my eye for the obvious reason that it’s just a bit different. If the photo weren’t blurry, you’d be able to see that it reads “Question war.”


* Taking photos while driving is highly dangerous. The author does not recommend such activities. Not does he recommend driving while talking on the phone, texting, eating, fighting with your spouse, watching movies on your iPhone, assembling IKEA furniture, darning socks, making shadow puppets, rolling handmade cigarettes or dancing the electric slide.

No we without me

I’m no graphic designer, but I really like this logo for the We Campaign.

A great, simple execution that combines the necessary personal involvement (the “me”) into the power of an organized group (the “we”). The green… well they didn’t really have a choice there, did they? But I think it works in black and white, too. And the circle is of course a symbol of completeness, enclosure, and it mimics the Earth.*

The TV spots are fine, but I don’t love them, perhaps because the “We didn’t wait” spot (embedded below) looks too much like all the corporate spots we’ve been seeing so much of. And the Al Sharpton/Pat Robertson spot’s premise is pretty much the same as Coke’s James Carville/Bill Frist spot that ran during the Super Bowl.



But this is a post about that nice logo. Which I like. And their corporate font uses that upside-down m as w throughout.

Check out the site here.


* And M&M’s.