Chermayeff & Geismar (Ivan Chermayeff, Tom Geismar)

1. What it is — a corporate mark for Chase Manhattan Bank (the merger of Chase National and Bank of the Manhattan Company). Publicly presented on 21.11.1960 (Logo Histories); cghnyc.com and the firm's Wikipedia give "since 1961" — a difference between presentation and full implementation. Alongside the mark, a purpose-built grotesque in two cuts, condensed and expanded, so that subsidiaries abroad could keep their name alongside the shared mark. In 2004/05 simplified to a solid blue octagon.
2. Composition — four trapezoidal wedges around an empty square; the outer outline is a regular octagon, the inner square is rotated 45° relative to the wedges. Sketches at cghnyc.com show the path: Chinese coin (circle in a square grid) → square in octagon → four wedges. The void is the load-bearing element: the square that no one drew is the "vault" (cghnyc.com) and the only place the eye can rest. The wedges have a slight offset (each is "pushed" clockwise), so the static figure gains rotation — "motion and dynamism, even a hint of three-dimensionality".
3. Colour — one: blue, official; plus black and a line version for newspapers. The mark is drawn to work in one colour on bad paper; colour is policy, not composition.
4. Typography — a purpose-built grotesque alongside the mark (Logo Histories); typeface/cut unnamed.
5. Message — nothing literal; Geismar could not find a symbol for banking "that wasn't a dollar, or a pound sign" (Creative Review), so he gave up on depiction. The mark is a "blank vessel" (99% Invisible) into which the company pours meaning — and that is only possible because Chase has the money to show it millions of times. The five-metre test: the outline reads as one closed geometric shape; at three seconds: it's recognised, with no clear reason why.
6. Why exactly this way — two cultures that need to be joined without favouritism (no old emblem), an unwieldy long name to be replaced, and a scale from cheque to a 60-storey façade. Abstraction solves all three; abstraction without a budget for repetition would not solve any of them.
7. What would kill it — closing the square (filling the void) or adding an initial C in the centre. Either would turn it into "just another octagon"; the wedges' rotation would disappear.

Principles: White space as shape Empty mark, full client Identity is a manual To verify against the image: the exact offset of the wedges (how many degrees) and the hex of the blue — from the original manual, not from the web.

1. What it is — an identity programme for Mobil Oil: a logotype in a purpose-built alphabet, a redrawn Pegasus, colour policy, integration with the architecture of Eliot Noyes's stations; packaging, vehicles, print, posters, signage, standards for the whole world. Geismar describes the programme in these words: "not only the logo and a special alphabet, but also an extensive design program that kept us very involved for some 30 years" (designboom). Eye 81 sums up the programme as three decades of work on "four basic ideas".
2. Composition — five letters of equal stroke weight, geometric, without serifs; only the O is red and a perfect circle, the rest blue. The circle in the word is the same circle as the circular canopies, circular pumps and circular displays at the station — "the idea of the red O reinforces a design concept to use circular canopies, pumps, and display elements" (cghnyc.com). The logotype is a cross-section of the architecture. Pegasus stands apart: red on a white disc, on a blue field, large on the building itself.
3. Colour — two: blue and red on white. Red appears only on one letter and on the horse, so red carries recognition at any distance, while blue carries the text.
4. Typography — the Mobil Alphabet, purpose-built, single-weight (Eye 81). It is not Futura, though it resembles it — the class is geometric grotesque (sans serif).
5. Message — the red O teaches pronunciation: "Mo-bil, not Mo-bile" (cghnyc.com). From the road, at night, under the canopy, one sees a single red circle in a blue word. The word and the object say the same thing.
6. Why exactly this way — the client builds thousands of stations; the identity must survive contractors, years, and local regulations. That's why there is a rule (circle, two colours, alphabet), not a finished drawing. This is the purest case of Identity is a manual after Otl Aicher.
7. What would kill it — a second red letter, or a gradient on the O "to look like the sun". A programme stops being a programme the moment another element demands attention.

Principles: Identity is a manual Program instead of artefact Flat colour reads at distance To verify against the image: the year the red O was introduced is not confirmed — sources diverge between 1964 and the completion of the programme with Noyes in 1965/66.

1. What it is — poster for his own exhibition, lithograph, 55,2 × 70,4 cm (according to MoMA). In the image the format is upright, so the measurement is probably w × h; not verified. MoMA also lists Bruce Blackburn as author, which is suspicious for 1960 since Blackburn comes later in his career; likely a record error. Related record: A Return Exhibition… at Gallery 303, The Composing Room (MoMA 155374, 1959).
2. Composition — black field; across it some 40 torn scraps of paper (white, beige, grey), each with text (typewriter, small type, handwritten), arranged in a loose grid of five columns. Nothing is aligned precisely; the grid reads from density, not from edges. The title line is one small row at the bottom. The eye wanders — and that's the intent: the poster is a catalogue of fragments, not a single image.
3. Colour — two values: black ground, light paper. No accent.
4. Typography — the text on the scraps is found (memos, notes), not set for the poster; typewriter and small-type classes.
5. Message — "this is our work table": the scraps of paper are what the studio actually works with. From five metres away: a dark plane with texture; from half a metre: sentences read out. The same thing Corita Kent (Sister Mary Corita) and Herb Lubalin do for two audiences, here without a bold headline word.
6. Why exactly this way — an exhibition of designers who have no "style" but a method; the poster must not resemble any of their work, so it shows the waste of the work. Brownjohn's line (typography as texture, Eye 4) is visible.
7. What would kill it — aligning the scraps flat into a clean grid. The torn edge is the argument; a straight edge would turn it into a table.

Principles: Grid holds chaos Cheap technique as language To verify against the image: what's written on the scraps (rejections? client notes?) — not legible in the available image; MoMA has no label.

1. What it is — poster, offset, 106.8 × 71.1 cm; Chermayeff, Geismar, Blackburn; client National Park Service (credit at the bottom). Gift of Chermayeff to MoMA in 1977.
2. Composition — photograph: about 15 souvenir Statue of Liberty figurines of different sizes and materials (copper, white plaster, pink plastic, brown, black, gold) crammed into a mass that fills the bottom two-thirds; all raise their torch, so the mass has one direction — up-right. The text runs in a single line along the angle of the torches, white, small, as if the statues were holding it. The top third is empty blue.
3. Colour — blue ground (sky without sky: flat) and the motley of the objects. Not one souvenir is the "correct" copper-green — all are the "wrong" colours, and that's the point.
4. Typography — white grotesque, one line, rotated; class only.
5. Message — a museum of immigration: the statue multiplied in cheap copies that immigrants used to buy. Many colours, one gesture. At five metres: a crowd of figures waving; at half a metre: kitsch. The message lies in the choice of objects, not in the composing.
6. Why exactly this way — the subject (immigration) is slippery to illustrate; found objects from the souvenir shop are evidence, not opinion (Emory Douglas's rule, here applied for the state).
7. What would kill it — one statue, the real one, green. Multiplicity and the wrong colours are the entire content.

Principles: Found object as a word Photograph instead of illustration One image, one word To verify against the image: the signature at bottom right (white, italic) — whose it is.

1. What it is — poster for an exhibition in Philadelphia for the bicentennial, offset, 106,7 × 71,2 cm; Chermayeff, Geismar, Blackburn.
2. Composition — white field divided into two registers. Top (~40%): one enormous pen signature, black ink, the stroke climbing across the full width; beneath it a small drawn quill pen (red tip, green shaft) laid horizontally like a line. Bottom (~50%): a rectangle with a thin orange-red border — inside it parchment sheets, two round seals, and the same signature repeated small. Below the frame a title in a single line. The eye moves top to bottom: signature → pen → document → title.
3. Colour — white, black, one warm colour (frame and pen tip), parchment beige. Colour only marks "exhibit" (frame) and "tool" (pen).
4. Typography — title in a small serif; document in period calligraphy — found material, not set type.
5. Message — "Reflections": the signature above is mirrored in the document below — one gesture and its trace. From five metres you see one black calligraphic mark on white; from half a metre you read whose it is.
6. Why exactly this way — a state jubilee pulls toward flags and eagles; the studio (the same one that did the US Bicentennial mark) takes the smallest object of the event — the signature — and enlarges it into an abstract drawing. The disproportion between signature and document carries the whole dramaturgy.
7. What would kill it — an enlarged portrait of the signer above the document. The signature is abstract; a portrait would be illustration.

Principles: Hand gesture against the cut Extreme mismatch of scale (conditional — a drawing, not a photograph) Found object as a word To verify against the image: whose signature it is (Hancock?); what's in the frame — a replica of documents or the exhibition plan. Not verified against the image.

1. What it is — poster for a 16-episode TV series (American diplomatic history from Versailles to Pearl Harbor, host Eric Sevareid, Channel 5), offset, 116,8 × 76,3 cm; Chermayeff, Geismar, Blackburn.
2. Composition — white field, one central vertical: WWI helmet / BETWEEN / civilian hat / THE WARS / WWII helmet. Three photographed objects and two lines of type alternate, equal spacing. Header "Mobil Showcase presents" at top, three lines of details and the Mobil logotype below, small. The word BETWEEN sits literally between the helmet and the hat: the layout is the sentence itself.
3. Colour — white ground; letters red; objects in their own colours (brown, dark grey, olive), with no background, with a small shadow.
4. Typography — spaced serif capitals (Didone/transitional class, thin serifs), red; Mobil Alphabet for the header. The specific typeface is not named.
5. Message — peacetime is the hat between two helmets. Without reading: three caps, the middle one is different. With reading: the title explained by the objects. One image, one sentence.
6. Why exactly this way — a series about history without images of events; an object from a cupboard is universal and requires no prior knowledge. Same recipe as with Chase: find the one element without which it can't work, then add nothing.
7. What would kill it — a background (a map of Europe, flags). The objects work because their ground is as white as a display case.

Principles: Found object as a word One image, one word Series as identity (Mobil Showcase / Masterpiece Theatre series — fixed regime: white or flat background, one photographed object, serif text, Mobil at bottom; object varies) To verify against the image: exact helmet models (Brodie / M1) not confirmed.

1. What it is — poster for the telephone fundraising week (23–26.2.1978, with WQXR radio), offset, 87.6 × 61.2 cm; Chermayeff, Geismar, Blackburn.
2. Composition — cream sheet; four staff lines (five thin black lines each) across the full width; on the lines, instead of notes, photographed glass marbles in various colours, each with a small shadow — some 30 pieces, arranged like a melody (up-down, groups of two-three). Two lines of handwriting at top, four lines of handwriting at bottom, letters spaced as if they too were notes. Nothing else.
3. Colour — cream, black, and the spot colour of the marbles (blue, red, green, yellow, white). Colour is only on the object, evenly scattered — no hierarchy, just as in a melody.
4. Typography — Chermayeff's handwriting, printed letters, spaced out; not typeset.
5. Message — children's marbles on the orchestra's staff: "play", "voluntary contribution", and sonically — glass on glass. From five metres: a sheet of music with colours; from half a metre: you see they're marbles and read the date.
6. Why exactly this way — a fundraising campaign must not look expensive, so handwriting and a child's object stand in for typesetting and an orchestra photograph. The staff is the grid (precise), everything on it is handmade or found — Hand gesture against the cut in the purest form of this body of work.
7. What would kill it — setting the text in a proper typeface. The contrast between mechanical lines and the hand is the only contrast in the piece.

Principles: Found object as a word Hand gesture against the cut Analogy instead of illustration To verify against the image: whether the marbles actually follow some melody (pitch by line) or are arranged freely.

1. What it is — poster for a series on PBS Channel 13 (Mobil sponsor), "A Drawing Room Intrigue", offset, 116.8 × 76.2 cm; Chermayeff, Geismar, Blackburn.
2. Composition — red field; on the right, across two-thirds of the height, a photograph of a man's black riding boot; entering it (or emerging from it) is a white cut-out silhouette of a woman's leg, knee bent, foot in the boot. Text top left, in a narrow column, white, left-aligned; Mobil bottom right, PBS mark left. Reading order: white leg (brightest) → boot → title.
3. Colour — three: red plane, black boot (photo, with gloss), white cut-out leg. The text is white too, so the leg and the title belong to the same "loud" plane.
4. Typography — serif, mixed setting, small, left-aligned; classy. Mobil logotype.
5. Message — a woman's leg in a man's boot = "a drawing room intrigue" in one object and one cut-out. From five metres you see red, black, the white leg. From half a metre you read which day and channel. The wit lies in the meeting of two registers: photograph (boot) and paper (leg).
6. Why exactly this way — Austen without costumes or portraits: no actors to photograph before the US broadcast, so found object + cut-out. Same recipe as 06, different ground.
7. What would kill it — the leg as a photograph. Then it's a stocking ad.

Principles: Found object as a word Flat colour reads at distance Series as identity One image, one word To verify against the image: whether the leg is a paper cut-out or a flat white printed field.