Customer Reviews

The Pentagram Papers: A collection of 36 papers containing curious, entertaining, stimulating, provocative, and occasionally controversial points of view that have come to the attention of...Pentagram

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You don't have to be a designer to enjoy the ecclectic array of topics and visual stimulation that is included in this book. But design professionals will truly enjoy the Pentagram backstory and insight into the creative process of this groundbreaking firm.

Designers and others of course, love nicely produced keepsakes. Paper companies latched onto the idea years ago of having their paper samples beautifully designed and printed. I've still got several Broad Spectrum samplers from Simpson Lee Papers designed in the early sixties and an almost complete set of the stunning Imagination series from Champion Papers issued in the sixties, seventies and eighties.

Pentagram first issued their delightful and intriguing keepsakes in 1971 given away to their clients and although it doesn't say so in the book they were also available on subscription, the first four were a £1, the next three £2 each but they gave up charging from number eight, probably too much administrative hassle.

The book is a wonderful celebration of the thirty-six Papers issued up to 2006. Each one has a few spreads shown (though not every page) so you'll get a good idea of the wide range of subjects: Paper 17: Mao badges; Paper 11: Norman Bel Geddes amazing 1937 City of Tomorrow or Paper 15: a few pages reproduced from a 1924 book about what can be seen from a train window between Paddington and Penzance, England. My favorite is Paper 16: Kingswalden Notes, a seventy-two pager showing architect Quinlan Terry's handwritten journal with his beautifully precise architectural drawings for a 1971 country house.

Kit Hinrichs, from Pentagram's San Francisco office, designed the book and from front to back it's a visual treat to look at. Excellent typography, printing (175dpi) paper and inserted into the inside of the back cover is your copy of Paper 36!

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

A wonderfully designed book, presenting a small insight into the creative minds of some of the best designers in the world, starting from 1975 with the first issue of Pentagram Papers and ending with the last number, the 36th, carefully inserted into the back cover. While this is no book about Pentagram's works, it's about what enchants its designers' minds. Definitely worth reading over and over throughout your life, just like Fletcher's The Art of Looking Sideways.

To be blatently sales related, an organization such as a design firm has a difficult time in selling itself. What can you say that doesn't sound like pure puffery - we do neat designs, we have brilliant people, look at what we've done in the past.

The Pentagram partnership instead decided to publish a series of papers, monographs really that talk about something that interestes the partners. The papers cover an eclectic range of subjects. A paper on Cuban cigar bands may be followed by a paper on rural Australian mailboxes or improvision in Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The papers have enough interest in their own right, in their acceptance by the Pentagram customers that they have kept up this practice for 35 years. And they keep the name Pentagram in the minds of their readers.

Here for the first time are all of the Pentagram Papers bound together in a single book.