New at Pentagram

Nuts.com Identity Featured in Fast Company

Quick Link: Nuts.com Identity Featured in Fast Company

Pentagram’s Book Design to Be Featured at Designers & Books Fair

Quick Link: Pentagram’s Book Design to Be Featured at Designers & Books Fair

New Work: ‘A Wilderness of Error’

In 1970, Jeffrey MacDonald, a Green Beret doctor stationed in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was accused of the brutal killing of his pregnant wife and two young daughters, a crime he attributed to intruders. He was convicted, but has always maintained his innocence. In A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald, the Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris presents 20 years of his own investigation into one of America’s most infamous murder cases. Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and his team have designed the book, out September 4, as well as a promotional online trailer and accompanying website.

Pentagram designed Morris’s previous book, Believing Is Seeing (2011), which examined the mysteries behind several famous photographs. For A Wilderness of Error, Bierut and designer Yve Ludwig worked closely with Morris to develop a design that eschews the typically lurid look of “true crime,” in favor of simple line drawings in stark black and white to convey the in-depth analysis of Morris’s arguments as well as the horror and notoriety of the case.

Philbrook Identity Reviewed on Brand New

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New Work: Philbrook Museum of Art

The Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is one of the most unique and beautiful art museums in the U.S. Located at Villa Philbrook, a 72-room Italian Renaissance-style home and 23 acres of gardens built in 1927 by oilman Waite Phillips, the museum is a cultural center of the city. Next year the Philbrook will expand to a new location in Tulsa’s historic downtown Brady District, the city’s growing arts area. Designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects, the 30,000-square-foot expansion will be housed in the industrial former home of the Tulsa Paper Company and will feature the Philbrook’s holdings in modern and contemporary art and design––including the remarkable George R. Kravis II Design Collection of 20th and 21st century design––as well as its world-class collection of Native American art.

To coincide with the expansion, Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and his team have created a brand identity for the Philbrook that puts an iconic new “face” on the institution. At the same time, Eddie Opara and his team have designed a new website for the museum that makes its collections more accessible to the public. Throughout the process, Pentagram worked with the Museum’s staff as well as with trustee George Kravis, who served as the project’s “guardian angel.”

Michael Bierut Interviewed by City Atlas

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Preview: Perot Museum of Nature and Science

A towering pair of three-dimensional brackets were the centerpiece at a glittering press conference last month to unveil an innovative identity system for the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, currently under construction in Dallas’ downtown Victory Park. The new identity, developed by Pentagram’s DJ Stout and Michael Bierut, uses a pair of distinctive red brackets in place of the letter “O” in the name Perot as a frame where a wide range of iconography can move in and out of the logotype over time.

“While the globe within the brackets will be the Museum’s institutional mark, this is actually a dynamic logo,” said Museum marketing director Beth Hook. “The Perot Museum will have the flexibility to switch out the content within the brackets and fill it with innumerable images, reflecting a multitude of science topics and an array of Museum programs, services and collections.”

Michael Bierut on the New Identity for Philbrook Museum of Art (Video)

Quick Link: Michael Bierut on the New Identity for Philbrook Museum of Art (Video)

Nuts.com Identity Reviewed on Brand New

Quick Link: Nuts.com Identity Reviewed on Brand New

New Work: Nuts.com

Nuts.com is exactly what it sounds like: an online retailer of every kind of nut, from peanuts, pistachios, pecans and pine nuts, to cashews, almonds and filberts, in salted, unsalted and organic varieties. Founded by “Poppy” Sol Braverman in 1929 as the Newark Nut Company, the family-owned business has grown from a stand in Newark’s Mulberry Street market into a thriving site that sells over 2,000 items and has annual sales of over $20 million. The company has been named one of the “Top Tastes of New Jersey” and featured on “Rachel Ray,” and with the slogan “We’re more than just nuts,” also offers dried fruit, snacks, chocolate, coffee and tea.

The company first launched its site in 1999 with the slightly confusing name/URL NutsOnline.com––a second choice after it found the URL Nuts.com was already taken. This year the company finally secured the Nuts.com address and made the move to the new name. With the change, the company asked Pentagram’s Michael Bierut to create a new identity and packaging that would help establish Nuts.com as a distinctive brand. The new graphics create an unmistakable look and feel that is fun, personal, and well, a little nutty.