Pentagram

Pentagram is the world’s largest independent design consultancy.
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The firm is owned and run by 21 partners, a group of friends who are all leaders in their individual fields. We design architecture and interiors, books, branding and identities, digital installations, exhibitions, films, products, posters, and websites from offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Berlin and Austin.

02/09/2026

and team have created the brand identity and campaign design for the 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival, home of the world’s best new films, series and immersive storytelling.
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📅 Programme released today
🎟️ Tickets on sale 17 September
📽️ Explore the programme at bfi.org.uk/lff
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Project Team
Marina Willer
Marta Gaspar
Thomas Chan
Hamlet Auyeung
Martin Grigorov .grigorovv
Emily Ueike
Fenella Rogers
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Photography by Mel Duarte
Music by Maxwell Sterling
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27/08/2026

Belgian designer and architect Henry van de Velde was one of the defining multidisciplinary figures of early modernism. In 1902, he founded the Großherzoglich-Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule in Weimar, Germany — the institution that would later evolve into the Bauhaus. In 1915, van de Velde recommended Walter Gropius as his successor at the Kunstgewerbeschule; when the school was reorganized and merged in 1919 to form the Bauhaus, Gropius became its founding director.

In 1927, after several years spent in Switzerland and the Netherlands, van de Velde completed his final residence, La Nouvelle Maison, in Brussels. Acquired by Thomas Rabe in 2015, the house subsequently underwent an extensive and meticulous restoration led by architect Guido Stegen.

and the Pentagram Berlin office were commissioned to design the accompanying publication, tracing the complete history and restoration of the house.

The design team wanted the book to resonate equally with architects and with readers interested in architecture more broadly — particularly those drawn to the restoration of listed buildings. Van de Velde based the proportions of La Nouvelle Maison on the dimensions of the bricks he had originally selected. When he later opted for a different brick because of its coloration, the proportions of the entire house had to be subtly recalibrated.

Inspired by this logic, the team developed the book’s typographic and layout grid directly from the brick structure of the house itself, resulting in narrow vertical gutters and unusually generous horizontal spacing. The overall format of the book follows this underlying system.

One of the central challenges was integrating more than 200 photographs, drawings, and illustrations — contributed by the architect and other collaborators — documenting materials, construction details, and every stage of the restoration process. The design team ultimately chose to work with two different paper stocks: an uncoated paper for the documentary sections, emphasizing tactility and process, and a coated stock for the photographic section to enhance image reproduction and depth.

Check out the full case study via the link in our bio!

25/08/2026

Happy 50th Birthday, Boston! Fifty years ago today Boston released its eponymous debut album with an iconic cover by Paula Scher.

Fueled by the smash hit “More Than a Feeling,” “Boston” was the top-selling debut in the US in 1976 and sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.

Despite the album’s popularity and ubiquitous cover, Paula has always had reservations about the design. She says:

“As an art director at CBS Records I usually worked directly with the artists or their management, but in this case I never spoke directly with Boston. The CBS product manager, Jim Charney, was jointly responsible for the graphic direction. I had designed two comps that were visual puns—a head of Boston lettuce and a Boston cream pie. But the band wanted a guitar.

“Boston founder Tom Scholz was an engineer, so Jim thought the cover should be scientific or technological and suggested a guitar-shaped spaceship. I thought the idea was idiotic. But we commissioned illustrator Roger Huyssen to create the image and lettering master Gerard Huerta for the logo.

“The first illustration by Roger had a spaceship that had run amok and people running for their lives. The band’s manager liked the spaceship but thought it should be saving the crowd, not attacking it. So we showed cities of the world escaping in guitar-shaped spaceships. The big ship was ‘Boston’ and the little ones in the back were labeled ‘London,’ ‘Paris’ and ‘Rome.’ The band thought this would be confusing so the other names were removed.

“In those days album covers were part of the listening experience. Boston didn’t have recognizable stars so the cover became the focus. The image struck a chord with 16 year olds in 1976, a time of technological change. It was THAT music and THAT graphic at THAT time. There was something sci-fi and futuristic about it. This was before ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind.’

“Hits have their own life. I don’t think anyone can plan or direct them, but CBS in the 70s created the climate for hits better than any other label at the time. It was magical. A friend of mine at CBS predicted that when I die, my epitaph will read, ‘She designed the Boston cover.’’

24/08/2026

In his never-ending quest to capture the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote has been a faithful customer of the Acme Company, whose products—Spherical Bombs, Rocket Skates, Spring-Powered Shoes—invariably fail him at the worst possible time.

In his classic humor essay “Coyote v. Acme,” Ian Frazier presents the opening statements of an imaginary lawsuit by Coyote against Acme for his personal injuries caused by the faulty devices, citing 85 occasions in which they “did cause him bodily injury due to defects in manufacture or improper cautionary labeling.”

Originally published in The New Yorker in 1990, Frazier’s piece is now the basis for “Coyote vs. Acme,” a live-action/animated comedy directed by Dave Green and starring Will Forte, Lana Condor and John Cena, in theaters this Friday.

Back in 2013, Frazier’s piece also inspired our annual Pentagram holiday card, where we reimagined the designs for five Acme gadgets, rendered as a series of highly detailed technical diagrams. Frazier’s essay was reprinted as a mini legal brief with drawings presented as supporting evidence. Michael Bierut and former industrial design partner Daniel Weil carefully considered each cartoon product, making sure the contraptions would functionally work.

The look of the diagrams was inspired by the photo-realistic illustrations of the McMaster-Carr hardware catalog. The designs for the gadgets undermined Coyote’s legal claims with special safety features like “screw-in detonator” for the Spherical Bomb and a “weighted armor jacket” to be worn with the Rocket Skates. But Wile E. always skims over the fine print.

Project team: Michael Bierut jesse reed

Illustrations by Simon Denzel

Coyote vs. ACME Pentagram Industrial Design

20/08/2026

Meet Simile.
A preview of the new identity for Simile AI. Their simulated worlds first appeared as pixel figures in academic research. The character keeps that origin alive. By and . Case study soon.

19/08/2026

Two names. Two spaces. One conversation.
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Designed by Samar Maakaroun for Doha Design District.
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At the heart of Msheireb Downtown Doha, Doha Design District is welcoming two new spaces, positioned opposite one another, conceived as twins, each holding half of a shared story.

We named them Sada and Mada.
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Mada (range, reach, possibility) is the maker’s space, where things begin and hands shape ideas into products. Sada (echo) is the space for exhibitions and events, where those ideas find an audience.
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Both names carry the letter D, drawn from the DDD symbol. The letterforms take their cues from the architecture of Msheireb itself, tying Sada and Mada visually back to Doha Design District.
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Two names, distinct yet inseparable, connected through rhythm, sound and meaning. Together, they trace the full creative cycle: from exploration to expression, from idea to impact.
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Read the full story via the link in our bio!
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Partner:
Samar Maakaroun
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Project team:

JACOB CHUNG
Giulia Saporito
Jonathan Nielsen
Caroline Fay Fright
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18/08/2026

Recently, Pentagram partners Jon Marshall and Hugh Miller gave a talk at Universität der Künste Berlin, very much in the spirit of Pentagram: interdisciplinary, collaborative, and working as equals.

Both Jon and Hugh spoke about their projects, their careers and the principles that guide their work. Jon talked about form and beauty as undervalued qualities in product design – and why beauty makes products last longer and more sustainable. Hugh spoke about typography, identity and a career built through relationships and friendships.

Neither Jon nor Hugh followed a single path into design. Instead, both built careers around moving between disciplines – and both have made that a particular strength.

17/08/2026

Happy Birthday , in 1943!

In 2024 Emily Oberman and team had the honor of developing the visual identity and messaging, and exhibition design for De Niro Con, a three-day festival celebrating the Oscar-winning actor in his hometown of NYC. The centerpiece of the Con was “De Niro Is an Icon,” a career-spanning exhibition named by the Pentagram team, featuring more than 300 items, many curated from De Niro’s personal archive housed at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin.

The Con coincided with the closing weekend of the Tribeca Festival, the annual event co-founded by De Niro with Janetribeca in 2002 to help revitalize downtown Manhattan following the devastation of 9/11. (Pentagram has worked on the branding for the Festival since 2021.) The Con also included film screenings, immersive experiences and panel discussions, with several appearances by De Niro himself.

The identity tapped into the typography found in film scripts and De Niro’s own handwritten script notations. The exhibition graphics helped tie together the remarkable variety of artifacts and images on display, including personal photos, costumes, props, script pages, storyboard sketches, set photos, movie posters, and other memorabilia. Strips of celluloid hung from the ceiling and the graphics incorporated quotes from iconic characters like Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver” and Rupert Pupkin in “The King of Comedy.”

The designers also developed merch that included playing cards illustrated with De Niro’s most memorable characters, t-shirts reproducing the taxi license he obtained when he was preparing for “Taxi Driver,” temporary prison tattoos inspired by Max Cady, a taxi-cab plush toy, and a baby onesie asking, “You talkin’ to me?”

It was the kind of obsessive attention to detail that rewarded devoted fans. Rupert Pupkin would have approved.

Full case study at the link in our bio!

Project team: Emily Oberman Laura Berglund Jase Hueser Anastasia Kharchenko Meredith Zerby Greg Morrison katherine Beatriz Melendez-Congar

13/08/2026

“I rarely land on route one. I’m always trying to see where else an idea can go.”

Listen to Pentagram Partner Hugh Miller (Hugh Miller) chat to Tom Foley (Tom Foley) in the latest edition of Monotype’s Creative Characters podcast.

In this fascinating conversation, the pair discuss everything from music and typography to sketchbooks, record sleeves and creative partnerships. Hugh reflects on the importance of self-critique, surrounding yourself with people who push you, and why great ideas rarely come from the first solution.

Listen to the podcast via the link in our bio or by visiting: https://www.monotype.com/resources/podcast/creative-characters-s6-e9-hugh-miller

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