Predating both Central Park and Prospect Park, Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn was one of the most important landscapes of the 19th century, ultimately influencing the rise of public parks and green space in the US. Pentagram’s Abbott Miller has designed A Beautiful Way to Go: New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery, a new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York that commemorates the 175th anniversary of this national historic landmark. The show opens this week and remains on view through September 15.
Established in 1838 in what was then a rural area of the city, Green-Wood is a bucolic 478-acre landscape of rolling hills, gentle ponds, meandering paths and striking Gothic Revival architecture that was for a time the most popular tourist attraction in the country. Visitors enjoyed the beautiful natural setting and saw the cemetery as a place of repose and relaxation. Green-Wood eventually inspired the design of Central Park and Prospect Park, as well as the creation of the first suburb, Llewelyn Park in New Jersey.
Miller’s exhibition design creates a continuous environmental surface from historic maps of the cemetery. Museum visitors navigate the exhibition encountering objects and stories of Green-Wood’s most famous “residents” that are positioned according to their location within the landscape.
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Punk’s iconoclastic aesthetic was originally rooted in street culture, but its subversive style has had an enduring influence on high fashion. This impact is explored in PUNK: Chaos to Couture, the spring 2013 exhibition at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The show juxtaposes original punk garments from the mid-1970s with more recent fashion to illustrate how haute couture and ready-to-wear have borrowed punk’s visual symbols, and how designers continue to extend the visual language of punk by merging social realism with artistic expression. Pentagram’s Abbott Miller has designed a catalogue for the exhibition that captures the immediacy of the subject in a format inspired by the 12” LP cover.
The exhibition, one of the most highly anticipated of the season, will be celebrated at next Monday’s 2013 Costume Institute Gala Benefit, the Met’s biggest event of the year. (Joining Vogue’s Anna Wintour as co-chairs this year are Beyoncé, Givenchy “New Goth” designer Riccardo Tisci, and “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and recent Pentagram actor Rooney Mara.) The show opens to the public on May 9 and will be on view through August 14, 2013.
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Quick Link: Abbott Miller’s Fifth Wall App Featured in El Pais
Quick Link: Abbott Miller’s Anniversary Collection for Formica Featured in The New York Times
Quick Link: Abbott Miller’s “Nine Dot Dance” App Previewed in the Wall Street Journal
Found on millions of surfaces in homes, businesses, schools, restaurants, hotels and virtually every other kind of interior, Formica® Laminate is one of the most ubiquitous materials in the world. (Chances are you are sitting at a desk, table or counter topped with it right now.) This year Formica celebrates its 100th anniversary with a special campaign designed by Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, Abbott Miller and Daniel Weil that pays homage to the making of this remarkable brand and its century of innovation, design and cultural impact.
The campaign kicks off with the launch of the Anniversary Collection, a series of new Formica laminates designed by Abbott Miller. The collection features patterns that explore the material’s seamless quality, long history and limitless potential. The collection was introduced this week at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas. Miller has also designed Formica Forever, a commemorative book that chronicles the company’s 100 years, to be published later this year.
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The Barnes Foundation is one of the most important collections of Post-Impressionist and early Modernist art in the world, home to masterworks by Cezanne, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, and others. Established in 1922 by Dr. Albert C. Barnes, a scientist and entrepreneur who amassed paintings, decorative art, and African sculpture (before it was widely collected), the Foundation was conceived with a mission to educate the public about art and, more importantly, how artists see and interpret the world. Barnes was deeply influenced by the theories of his friend John Dewey, whose emphasis on the role of art in everyday life led Dr. Barnes to develop his collection as a resource for teaching. Barnes commissioned architect Paul Cret to design a gallery in Merion, Pennsylvania, to display his collection and hold classes in art theory.
Last year the Barnes moved to a spectacular new home designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects in downtown Philadelphia. The building has just received the 2013 AIA Institute Honor Award for Architecture. The Foundation was conceived by Dr. Barnes as a wholly integrated environment in which the objects on display are presented in highly coordinated settings, which he called “ensembles” that create a visual dialogue among works. Pentagramʼs Abbott Miller has worked with the Foundation and the architects to capture the distinctive sensibility of the Barnes Foundation in its new identity, as well as in environmental graphics, publications and the museum’s website.
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Quick Link: Abbott Miller’s Hot Bread Kitchen Branding Reviewed on The Dieline
Hot Bread Kitchen is an innovative social enterprise that employs and empowers immigrant and low-income women in the art of making and selling bread. Founded by Jessamyn Rodriguez, the non-profit bakery provides paid on-the-job training and produces breads inspired by its bakers and the countries they come from. The multi-faceted program creates a platform for developing regional and ethnic bread products, teaching English as a second language, and entrepreneurship.
Pentagram’s Abbott Miller has designed branding for Hot Bread Kitchen that highlights the bakery’s mission and helps raise its profile as it begins to expand from New York to other cities. The project was recently featured on Fast Company’s Co.Design blog.
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Quick Link: Abbott Miller’s Branding for Hot Bread Kitchen Featured in Fast Company
