Senior designer Dan Friedman and art director Gene Grossman brought elements of Wolfgang Weingart's "new typography" to a vast system of signs and printed matter. Following an established strategy in corporate identity design, Friedman (interview) and his colleagues reduced the company's existing logo to a minimal mark. In the logo's three-dimensional applications, Friedman introduced a gentle convex curve across the surface of the sign, giving it a sensual, bodily presence. Applying the mark to brochures, forms, and other printed matter, Friedman used grid systems and typographic rules in a playful manner. The ability to successfully integrate subtle and complex forms into the field of corporate identity was a triumph for proponents of the new typography, but it was also a disturbing indication that a vanguard sensibility could be appropriated by the profession's culturally conservative center. Friedman abandoned his practice in graphic design in the early 1980s in favor of making experimental furniture that rejected and even ridiculed corporate values of uniformity and control. [back] © Copyright 1996 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

Citibank Identity Manual Logo, 1975, offset lithograph Designer: Dan Friedman Art Director: Gene Grossman Firm: Anspach Grossman Portugal, Inc. Collection Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, Gift of the Estate of Dan Friedman