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Profile
Rick Poynor

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Pentagram, founded in 1972, is one of the best known and most influential graphic, product, and architectural design firms in the world. Its partners are distinguished members of the international design community, consistently generating award-winning work of the highest quality. Profile is the first Pentagram book to include the design firm's `new guard`; partners Fernando Gutiérrez, DJ Stout, Lisa Strausfeld, and Abbott Miller. The book is a unique collection of essays on Pentagram's nineteen partners by best-selling authors, revered design critics, editors, and other well-known cultural figures. Eloquent and insightful explorations into the personalities, thought processes, careers, and work of the different partners, the essays are generously illustrated with examples of both key projects and lesser-known works. As a whole, Profile not only sheds light on nineteen individual talents, but also provides a comprehensive overview of the legendary firm that has influenced the course of design for over thirty years. Included is a foreword on Pentagram's history and evolution by Rick Poynor, one of today's most respected design critics and founder of the incisive British graphic-design magazine Eye. Pentagram began with five partners; today, there are nineteen, working in London, New York, Austin, San Francisco, and Berlin. Following the firm's unique partnership structure, they each have their own clients, and work in their own way with their teams. They share equally, and contribute equally. Similarities in style, temperament, and aspiration between them are few. What these designers do have in common, however, is Pentagram itself, and the shared commitment to producing high-quality, relevant work in the fields of graphic, product, and architectural design. As design critic Rick Poynor points out in his introductory essay for Profile, `No other design company can boast Pentagram's concentration of fully engaged design horsepower at the highest operational level.` Indeed, with a list of clients that reads like a Who's Who of both the commercial and cultural world, the firm has over the last several years continued to produce influential, diverse, award-winning work: Justus Oehler's corporate identity for the Star Alliance, Fernando Gutierrez's editorial designs for Colors and Matador magazines, Lorenzo Apicella's mobile tourist pavilion for the Hong Kong Tourist Authority, Abbott Miller's exhibition design for Harley Davidson, and Lisa Strausfeld's media wall project for New York's Penn Station are but a few examples. Since Pentagram's inception, the firm has taken care to document its work and evolution (Pentagram: The Compendium was published by Phaidon 1993). Profile follows this tradition, showcasing both recent and classic projects, introducing new partners, and analyzing the company's position in the design world as it embraces the new millennium. But it is more than `just` the latest Pentagram survey: rather than painting another group portrait, Profile takes a new approach and focuses on the individual partners who together make up the whole. In nineteen individual and well-illustrated essays by acclaimed writers, critics, and journalists, the different partners are profiled with wit and insight. What emerges is a sharper understanding of the unique talents whose commonalities and idiosyncrasies inflect the character of Pentagram.