Date: c. 2015
Size: 6 x 8.25 inches
Pentagram Papers is a multi-disciplinary, independently owned design studio.
According to their website: "Our work encompasses graphics and identity, strategy and positioning, products and packaging, exhibitions and installations, websites and digital experiences, advertising and communications, data visualizations and typefaces, sound and motion. Our 23 partners are all practicing designers, and whether working collaboratively or independently, they do so in friendship.
Our structure is unique. We are the only major design studio where the owners of the business are the creators of the work and serve as the primary contact for every client. This reflects our conviction that great design cannot happen without passion, intelligence and — above all — personal commitment, and is demonstrated by a portfolio that spans five decades, many industries, and clients of every size."
Pentagram has produced a series of signature annual documents, known as Pentagram Papers, exclusively for clients and colleagues since 1975. Each Paper explores a unique and curious topic of interest to the Pentagram designers.
#47: Pentagram Papers 47: "From 2010 to 2015, the artist Brent Birnbaum visited art museums around the world and collected an unusual set of souvenirs—locker keys, coat check claim tags and tokens. In exchange, he left behind jackets, bags, newspapers and other items, essentially leaving his own objects in the collection of the museums. This project is the focus of Pentagram Papers 47: Museum Collection.
Birnbaum has said “collecting is my medium” and many of his projects feature collections of everyday objects, including treadmills, mini-fridges, price tags, and IKEA shelves, all repurposed with aesthetic rigor. The new Paper features his archive of 48 museum locker keys, claim tags and tokens in numerical order of their marking (with a few numbers missing). The items are also pictured on a poster folded into the back of the Paper, with a world map of all the museums visited on the reverse.
Glenn Adamson, former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, writes about the new Paper in a post on Disegno: “By the last page, depicting a paper Office Depot ticket numbered 311242, the reader has taken a journey round the world that is both typographic and typological.”
In very good condition and a perfect purchase for any lover of graphic design.