New Work: Poetry Magazine Anniversary Cover
Founded in 1912, Poetry Magazine is the English-speaking world’s oldest monthly dedicated to verse. Published by the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, the magazine has helped establish the reputations of poetic greats like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore.
To celebrate its 100th anniversary, Poetry’s designers, Winterhouse Studio, invited 11 artists and designers, including Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, to reinterpret its iconic Pegasus logo, originally created by Eric Gill, the artist and type designer (Gill Sans, Perpetua), in 1932. The Pegasus has long been a symbol of poetic inspiration—the mythical creature was a gift to the Muses from Athena, goddess of wisdom—and various artistic interpretations of the winged horse have appeared on the cover of Poetry over the years.
Bierut’s Pegasus appears on the cover of the magazine’s March 2012 edition, “The Translation Issue.” The assignment perimeters stipulated that the logo had be black and white, line-based and work against the magazine’s white cover and special “100 Years” logo. For his design, Bierut has transformed Gill’s Pegasus into an arrangement of 100 dots of various sizes, giving the symbol an appearance that suggests fleet, pulsing pixels of digital information.
Other designers invited to reinterpret the symbol this year include Marian Bantjes, Milton Glaser, Felix Sockwell and Cathie Bleck.
Project Team: Michael Bierut, partner-in-charge and designer; Hamish Smyth, designer.