Michael Bierut on the Enduring Power of Simplicity

Across his four-decade-long career in graphic design, Michael Bierut has amassed an impressively robust tally of bold-faced clients. From The New York Times, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the Robin Hood Foundation to Mastercard, the New York Jets, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Bierut and his team at the multidisciplinary design firm Pentagram—which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with a two-volume book from the publisher Unit Editions, and where he has been a partner since 1990—have crafted some of the most unforgettable, standout identities and graphics around. Perhaps most notable in recent years, Bierut devised the unequivocal “H” logo used throughout Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Consistently fueled by the sheer delight he finds in design, Bierut is also a co-founder of the website Design Observer, launched in 2003 and among the first online platforms dedicated entirely to design. With everything he creates, Bierut whittles each of his concepts down to its most essential core, ultimately arriving at something that feels both rigorously thought through and inevitable in its simplicity.

On this episode of Time Sensitive, Bierut talks with Andrew about the integral practice of keeping notebooks throughout his life; the deep groundedness of his nearly lifelong relationship with his wife and high-school sweetheart, Dorothy Kresz; and why the “why” of design is far more important to him than the “how.”

Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Michael Bierut
• 01:13:57 Pentagram
• 00:23:28 Design Observer
• 01:23:40 Mastercard logo
• 01:30:44 The Library Initiative
• 01:39:26 How To
• 01:39:59 Pentagram: Living by Design