The Greatest Designers of our Age #9: Ivan Chermayeff & Tom Geismar
Changing the world of branding. Forever.
As I began learn about logos, brands and identities, Ivan came up on my radar pretty quickly. This was during my (ongoing) design education, where I was pouring over design books all day. I pour over the Internet these days. (Although I believe books are still available occasionally.)
I think the NBC logo has to be one of my favourite logos of all time.
It is just gloriously colourful, optimistic, stylish, beautiful, elegant, fun, timeless…need I go on? Oh, and insanely clever, with its use of negative space for the head of the peacock. This is genius work folks! #watchandlearn
Early life
Ivan Chermayeff was one of the most respected and talented designers the U.S has ever seen. His designs slowly became part of the American psyche, deeply entrenched and omnipresent across the country, and beyond.
Chermayeff was born in June 1932, into luxurious surroundings. Mixing with the upper classes in the nicer parts of England, his famous Russian architectural father, Serge, ensured Ivan began life with many advantages, including luxuriating down at his father’s beloved Bentley Wood country estate. Such was his upbringing, Ivan thought it was quite normal to be reclining in one’s garden, doodling away whilst nestled into the arms of a Henry Moore masterpiece. A nice piece of garden furniture Serge had purchased for the lawns.
From such auspicious beginnings, the world was Ivan’s oyster, and he was soon accepted into the University of his choice, Phillips Academy of Andover, Massachusetts in 1950. He studied at Harvard until 1952 and the Institute of Design until 1954. He graduated from the Yale School of arts in 1955, and that same year he interned with Alvin Lustig, one of the first pioneers of graphic design. Shortly after, he moved to CBS and designing record covers.
Whilst at Yale, he met Tom Geismar, and the two quickly realised they had the same interests, and a symbiotic approach to design problems. It was the beginning of a lifelong creative partnership, and they formed their own agency, Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar Associate in 1956.
The firm produced over 600 logos, and were one of the first design agencies in the US to promote powerful, simple brand work, as personified in their early work for Chase Bank in 1960. Although the brand itself has gone through numerous iterations over the decades since the Chermayeff initial design, the essence and the shapes of the design remain untouched. Only 4 years after the inception of the agency, the won the right to re-design the Mobil Oil brand. This would establish the agency and begin a run of work that went unchallenged for many decades.
There is a brutal simplicity to all of Chermayeff and Geismar’s work. Every solution has boiled every possible question down to it’s essence – where nothing else can be removed, and nothing more can be added.
When Tom Geismar was asked about his relationship with Chermayeff, he responded: “It’s a lot like a marriage. After school, (Yale University) when Ivan and I had gotten to know each other fairly well, I went into the Army for two years. After a year and a half, we hadn’t been in contact, but one day he wrote to me–we used to write letters in those days–and said he was thinking of stopping his freelance business and forming a small firm, with another fellow named Robert Brownjohn, and would I like to join them? I was in the Army, but I said sure, I had no plans for my life after the Army. There’s a letter from Ivan, written a month and a half before I got out of the army, saying “We look forward to seeing you. Here are some business cards for you–give them out.” It was one of those lucky moments in time, where two geniuses meet, and by combining their powers, they become greater than the sum of their parts.
From the early beginnings of the agencies’ life, Chermayeff and Geismar managed to snag some household names as clients. Armani, Barneys, Hearst, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), National Geographic, NBC (National Broadcasting Company), PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), Rockefeller, and many others all came to C&G for inspirational design and branding work. In 2003 Serge Haviv joined the firm, and 10 years later was added to the masthead of the company’s banner.
Born in 1955, this wonderfully dated original Pan Am logo was designed by Charles Forberg and Edward Larrabee Barnes. At its peak of business, the Pan Am logo was one of the most recognised logos in the whole world, thanks to its global flying network. It is something of a classic, and well designed and perfectly balanced. The size of the type in relation to the size of the globe is perfect, at that size and the serifs on the logotype are reminiscent of speed and efficiency. The globe also has its latitude and longitude lines of course, but these are also a tip of the hat to its international flight paths, sitting atop the wonderful blue of the ocean below. Something of a classic in itself. From PanAm’s insta account: “In 1955, New York architect Edward Larrabee Barnes was hired as Pan Am’s consultant designer. He and his associate Charles Forberg, in preparation for the introduction of America’s first commercial jets, the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC 8, revamped the image of the company. The traditional half-wing symbol was replaced with a clean blue globe over-laid with curved parabolic lines to give an impression of an airline without geographic demarcations. Pan Am’s famous blue ball logo became and still remains, one of the worlds’s most recognised corporate symbols, along with Coca-Cola and Kodak.” The typeface now seems classic 1950s and was possibly in need of an update when Chermayeff and Geismar arrived on the scene, in 1971. Almost seems a shame though.
A nice example of the PanAm livery back in 1964. It is quite stunning. Alas, Chermayeff’s redesign never made in onto any plane livery. Tragic.
In 1971, Chermayeff & Geismar won the job to redesign the Pan Am brand. The airline was struggling and C&G were contracted to update the look and feel of the ailing airline.
In 1968, Juan Trippe, the charismatic founder of Pan American World Airways, ordered 25 Boeing 747s. The world’s largest airline would never recover from this bold move: by 1971, when the first of these ‘jumbo jets’ flew under the Pan Am brand, the company – weighed down by recession, increased fuel prices, inflation and an inability to successfully conquer domestic routes – was struggling to survive.
Screenshot 2023-02-18 at 10.51.01 am.webp323.14 KB Sorry, I just HAD to fix it. That letterspacing was disturbing me. That’s better.
Tom Geismar on the PanAm campaign: “The concept for the posters was simple: to stand out from the competition by getting great images from Magnum photographers, and letting the images have full effect by minimising the country name and Pan Am logo,” says Tom Geismar. “The poster series was one project in an extensive graphic identity program for the airline, as part of which the name was shortened from Pan American World Airways to the vernacular Pan Am and set in the straight-forward Helvetica typeface.”
Working with Patrick Friesner, Pan Am’s head of sales, several agencies were brought on board to produce collateral for the new brand. One of the most iconic sets of work to come out of that era, were the Pan Am promotional posters.
Said Chermayeff later: “‘The whole idea of this series,’ he said in a recent interview, ‘was to make a simple statement about some part of the world … and to use that simple, straightforward message with the Pan Am identity. Make it as little “corporate” as possible and make as much a sense of adventure and of the place as possible.” Pan Am slowly continued its decline with corporate mis-management and strategic errors – leading to its ultimate demise.
But time and bankruptcy hasn’t dimmed the magic of this romantic period of aviation, captured in this wonderful collection of nostalgic artefacts of modernism. If you’re still pining for more, you can relive the magic of the 50’s era PanAm – with a lovely collection of PanAm collectibles.
“When the publishers Harper & Row, with their logo of a torch, merged with Wm. Collins, with its fountain symbol, C&G had the opportunity to create a mark to celebrate and identify this union. The resulting design joins the essence of both symbols—fire and water— into a new icon for the new company, HarperCollins.” Something of a pattern emerging here, with the old red white and blue rearing its head again! Or maybe it’s just that I have a penchant for this particular colour combo. Whichever it is, this is another masterwork from Chermayeff and Geismar. So simple, and yet so powerful. Whilst others may create complicated logos, full of intricately illustrated components, colours and typography – elegance and longevity have long resided in the loving arms of simplicity.
“When somebody presents a problem, my first attitude towards it as the first stage of the design process is to find out if indeed the problem you’ve been asked to solve is the real problem. And surprisingly enough, it usually isn’t or at least not exactly. We have to understand what our clients are – which is not necessarily what they tell us.” Ivan Chermayeff
CBS. A master at work
In 1956, John J.Graham created the first CBS Peacock identity. Known then, simply as “The Bird” (which in a way regarding taste, was a perfect nickname) it was an early abstraction of a Peacock, brightly hued and colourful – an indication of the coming tsunami of colour TV sets across the nation. RCA owned CBS then, and they were a major manufacturer on televisions in the US. (Smart – see what they did there?) The Peacock became a marketing tool for RCA and was used across a vast array of collateral and advertising, in the hope that viewers would become familiar with their trusted news Peacock, and be inspired on their next visit to the TV store, to purchase correctly. From 1957 onwards, the peacock became animated as the synched up marketing tools across a multi-channel push towards colour televisions. In 1976, the natural evolution of the Peacock stumbled, and disaster almost struck. NBC updated their logo to the horrifically awful trapezoid “N”, comprising two grotesquely unbalanced creatures of doom. I shall not post it here, for fear of compromising the quality of our site. Some electrons may jiggle into our matrix. Fortunately, only 3 years later in 1979, the Peacock returned in the fall of ’79. Sadly, the new “N” trapezoid was still lurking in the background, yet to be killed off by the stoned in-house arbiters of good taste who had yet to get out of bed. And so it remained for 9 long, and visually painful years. Our beloved baby peacock, still yet to really fan out it gloriously multicoloured feathers, dumped on top of a trapezoid “N” which was now almost completely obscured and totally redundant. It was the ’70s. It was flares. You can understand. Almost. I’ll wager my left toenail this mammoth corporate misstep came about after many months of design-by-committee. Where every idiot with access to the C-Level toilet had to stick their oar in.
In 1986, the miracle happened. NBC contacted Chermayeff and Geismar to essentially redesign and update the grotesque corporate hell they called their logo. Taking the most essential element of the logo, the power and the grace of the Peacock, and brilliantly identifying what had to go, C&G freed our beloved bird from its cages of bad taste and let it fly. C&G made some elemental but brilliant design moves in their inspirational update. 1. Simplifying the design of the bird (see the theme here?) from 11 feathers down to a perfectly symmetrical 6. Clutter is bad for design. Keep simplifying and simplifying, until there is nothing left to take away. Nothing superfluous makes super design. 2. Changing the colours from variants of red to much more potent primary colours (don’t be afraid to be bold) makes the design easier to understand, memorise and it also becomes much more eye-catching. 3. Simplify, simplify: they ditched the “N”. In a logo, don’t try and ever say more that 2 things. You can say “Peacock”, and you can say “Colour”. But don’t say ” We have this peacock, it has lots of brightly coloured feathers. He also has this blueish glow around him and sits on top of a massive “N” logo which also has a blue glow round it so it’s really two logos for the price of one or is it maybe just two random shapes, but anyway he also has this nice spikey feather on its head – check it out!” 4. Instead of having the Peacock’s head turning left, looking to the past, they turned the head so it was looking to the right – the future. Love it.
I find it staggering that 2 men could have produced such a humungous body of incredible work. I could literally sit here all day and talk about it. Alas, I have a business to run. This page could literally be 20,000 words long and I still wouldn’t get through it all. There are many greta designers, but a handful, perhaps, who can claim the same level of global achievements as Chermayeff and Geismar. How they managed to so quickly build their agency and change the face of the United States and eventually the world is a testament both to their design genius and unyielding commitment to excellence. Onwards we go, to their next masterwork, their evolution of the National Geographic brand.
Chermayeff and Geismar can’t claim to have invented the National Geographic’s iconic yellow frame – the border of their magazine. Though if anyone should be able to, it’s them. The border began appearing on the magazine cover around 1910, and continued to evolve through the years, changing hues and border depth. (Check out this awesome video of the evolution of the NatGeo mag here.) What they can claim to though, is creating a mark, based on this border, making it the National Geographic “logo” and building a modern brand around this new mark. They also created a new font for the company, and showed the how to evolve it in the 20th century. Now, when anyone around the world sees a yellow frame on top of a picture of nature, they know it’s National Geographic. It doesn’t even need words. Now that’s marketing.
“Our visual environment is deteriorating at a pace that is shocking and perhaps irretrievable.” Ivan Chermayeff, 1964. (He hadn’t even seen social media at that point..)
One Chermayeff’s most famous pieces of design – for the US broadcast of the TV drama Churchill: The Wilderness Years. The essence of great design is to be posed a problem, and solve it in an immediate and easily understandable (simple) way. Churchill, a constant smoker surrounding himself in a smog a cigar smoke. How can we identify him? By his famous hat. it could only be him. A brilliant and stylistically pleasing solution. Not only could Chermayeff create bold, exacting brand identities, he was also a superb illustrator. Chermayeff also had a unique knack of sourcing the most improbable connections between two things that no one else would have noticed.
“You’ve got to make connections that are not obvious. Most people are incapable of seeing very much compared to what they could if there were interested to look around and make those connections. It’s noticing the tiniest kind of thing that brings to things together into an intimate connection.” Ivan Chermayeff
“Ivan is a design icon, but he also was a mentor, a partner, and a friend. He was obsessed with good design. And good to Ivan meant excellent–anything less than excellent wasn’t even design. Ivan’s relentless quest for the perfect relationship between form and idea is the highest inspiration anyone could hope for, and will be his lasting legacy to the industry and the people who knew him..” Sagi Haviv – Partner at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv.
Chermayeff’s long list of awards and lifetime achievements
President of AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) from 1963 to 1966. Trustee of MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) from 1965 to 1986. Member of the board of directors of IDCA (International Design Conference in Aspen) from 1968 to 1999. Board Director at Municipal Art Society of New York in 1972-76. Member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) since 1978. Board Director at Smithsonian Institution from 1988 to 1996. He was elected to the Hall of Fame of ADC New York (Art Directors Club) in 1982. Trustee of the Archives of America Art in 1987-90. Royal Designer for Industry since 1992.
He was awarded numerous prizes including the Industrial Art Medal from AIA (American Institute of Architects) in 1967, the Philadelphia College of Art Gold Medal in 1971, AIGA Gold Medal (American Institute of Graphic Arts) in 1979, the President’s Fellow Award from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1981, the First International Design Award from Japan Design Foundation in 1983, the Yale Arts Medal in 1985, the Distinguished Service Award from New School University in 1999, the Society of Illustrators Gold Medal in 2002, the Tokyo Type Directors Club Award in 2004, and the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2014.
He also received a honorary doctorate in law from the Portland School of Art in 1981, and two honorary doctorates in fine arts from the Philadelphia University of Arts and the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington in 1991.
Sadly, Chermayeff passed away in 2017. Tom Giesmar continues to work at cghnyc.com in New York, producing fabulous brand work. Chermayeff left an indelible impression on the American psyche, one which will never be matched again – at least not in this lifetime. An exceptional man.
