The Society for Environmental Graphic Design published a blog post on Cooper Union alum Abbott Miller, who was tapped to design the signage on the school's new academic building. He chose something from the Foundry Gridnik type family (you know, the thinking man's Courier).
Miller used dimensional type to engage and activate multiple planes and architectural surfaces. The building identity, for example, is optically extruded letterforms that appear "correct" when seen in strict elevation, but distort as the profile of the letter is dragged backwards in space. The top half of the letters, appearing on one plane of the canopy, are dimensional, while the bottom half are cut out of another plane, echoing the transparency of the building's skin of perforated stainless steel.
Exactly what I was thinking.
4 comments:
I rarely reveal my font geek-ness (because of the inevitable taunting and giggling), but I love this stuff!
(Don't miss this documentary on Helvetica.)
I like it too, pinhead... and I've been meaning to see that documentary....
Cool. It's surely the best looking & most interesting building build on the Bowery, hell--build downtown, in the last five years.
I like the CU building a lot and Abbott's bit of branding is fine but...but...but...it's ain't about "mulitiple planes and architectural surfaces" just the bit that Abbott wrote for the proposal about the work after the Pentagram interns had knocked it off. It works on the front of the building but the stuff on the inside looks much better on paper than on actual walls. And all of, in the context of the building, looks like an afterthought. I expect everything except the name on the front will get redone within, oh, five years. Pentagram does nice work here and there but, come on, they don't have to do _everything_ for every institution in town. Spending Pentagram fees at your average little shop in Dumbo would have bought both a nice entry sign and some thoughtful work on the inside.
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