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October 02, 2004
Berklee
The berklee performance center at the tail end of back bay has one of the most 70s looking graphic identities in boston. It begins with the earthy color scheme, and reliance upon alternating stripes, but clearly the most striking element here is the typeface itself.
It has a somewhat schizophrenic character: one the one hand the letters without ascenders or descenders are highly geometric, with perfectly circular `o' and `e' characters, and even letters one would expect to be more restrained, such as the `r' or `m' have strong, rounded arcs as their most definitive features. In stark contrast to all this organic roundness are the perfectly straight and sharply inclined ascenders on the `b' and `k', and the boxy parallelogram formed in conjunction with the `l'. What makes that `kl' combination stand out all the more is that all of the other letters with straight components also contain a rounded edge, either in the form of a descender, such as the `t', or as a complete circle (the `b' and `p'). Whether this makes for an interesting contrast or a jarring break to the flow of the rest of the line is left to the reader...
Posted by cds at October 2, 2004 09:50 PM