Arguably the most famous design studio in the world, Pentagram is based in New York, London, Austin and Berlin. Designer Michael Gericke has been a partner of Pentagram for over 35 years during this time he has cemented himself as one of today’s most influential designers. His new 520-page monograph of his work titled Graphic Life illustrates and details his enthusiasm for design in a way that’s sure to inspire many creatives.
The book outlines Gericke’s approach to design from a spatial perspective and delights in the concept of 2D graphics in the three-dimensional real world. As he puts it: “I’ve found a graphic voice, like life, with many tones and inflexions, can say quite a bit and tell quite a story.”
The book is richly illustrated and structured into four sections which Gericke says make up the unique thread to his work. The sections are places, images, stories, and symbols. Graphic Life demonstrates both Gericke’s deft ability to translate snappy, memorable imagery into symbols of places and feelings and also the position of his design work at the intersection of image-making, communications, and the built environment.
Graphic Life impressively follows Gericke’s 35-year span of collaboration which include the likes of Rockefeller Center; Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum; One World Trade Center and post-9/11 installations at the WTC site; and New York’s new Penn Station.
The book is prefaced by the prize-winning architect Moshe Safdie, with commentary by Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic and educator Paul Goldberger, who writes: “Every design he does so closely connects to something about its subject that you feel as if all Gericke has ever been trying to do is to coax forth the true nature of a place or a thing and understand its aspirations, and then present them with grace.”
