Week 1-2 - Whitney Museum

Definitions hard to understand (research):
Op- art/kinetic art


The Whitney Museum of American Art wanted to create a new graphic identity and to create a new graphic language. The redesign was to recreate and go alongside their new location. New location, new identity. This was to occur in 2015 but the identity was to be launched in 2013.

This project needed to tell a new story and by doing that, they based it upon a single sentence in order to define and tell their story.

"It would be easier to present the history of art as a simplistic line - but that's not the Whitney".

This sentence was based upon something they stumbled in their first proposal. This was part of a booklet published in Spring 2011 to an article called "A Chief's Curator's Perspective on the Whitney of the Future.

This single sentence/line helped inspire an imagery for their identity. A simple shape of a line? This signified the history of art but was it right? So the zig-zag line came into place, kind of a W, which represented the pulse from the pulse of a heart. The heartbeat of a city.

It also conveyed the message of practically unfolding a ruler and unfolding history.

The graphic identity represented as a five sentenced manual

1. Divide the available are in four successive equal spaces.
2. Draw a line in the first space, from the left bottom corner to the right bottom corner.
3. Draw a line in the third space, from the left upper corner to the right bottom corner.
4. Draw a line in the fourth space, from the left bottom corner to the right bottom corner.

The five lines are deemed to be a design system rather than a logo or logotype.

The zig-zag line, an open sign can be translated with all different kinds of meanings.

Alot of emphasis is placed on the "opening space", easy on the eyes for audience. The idea of function follows form is shown as the implication of art coming first then institute follows.

The W Shaped Grid - also seen as a flexible typographic grid. The state of having a open and closed line. It is also the the notation as an object and object in notation.



Response - what intrigues me in the simplicity and story the lines can portray through it changes. The more open (wider) the lines are create more of a open easiness towards audience while close gives a different reponse and has helped formed an identity for the Whitney company.