PurplePrice Mag · · 2 min read
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Pentagram is not a company that makes objects but a design studio, one of the most influential in the world in graphic design and corporate identity. It is also famous for the way it is organised: it has no chief executive or board, but a group of equal partner-designers, who own the studio in equal shares and each lead a team.
From Fletcher/Forbes/Gill to Pentagram
It all began in 1962, when the graphic designers Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes and Bob Gill opened the studio Fletcher/Forbes/Gill in London. In 1965 Gill left and the architect Theo Crosby joined. In 1956 Crosby had taken part in the exhibition This Is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery, seen as the birth of British Pop art: an experience of “horizontal” work among equals that he wanted to repeat. In 1972, with the graphic designer Mervyn Kurlansky and the industrial designer Kenneth Grange, the partners became five and the studio took the name Pentagram, after the five points of the star.
Graphics, products, architecture
From the start Pentagram combined different disciplines. Kenneth Grange, designer of appliances for Kenwood, Wilkinson Sword razors and Kodak cameras, had just designed the cab of the InterCity 125 high-speed train (1968). In 1989 Alan Fletcher designed the logo of the Victoria and Albert Museum, still in use. In 1978 Colin Forbes opened the New York office, later joined by Michael Bierut and Paula Scher: she created the identity of the Public Theater (1994), inspired by the type of street posters, and the Windows 8 logo (2012).
Pentagram today
Today the studio has offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Austin, and about twenty-five partners, renewed by periodically inviting new designers. Its clients have included Citibank, Saks Fifth Avenue, United Airlines, Warner Bros., New York's High Line and the National Gallery of Art in Washington; alongside its commercial work, the studio also does pro bono projects for non-profit organisations.
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