The 1995 Next Wave Festival ©Michael Beirut

The Brooklyn Academy of Music, commonly known to New Yorkers as BAM, faces a fate familiar to many arts organizations. While simultaneously being one of the oldest continuously operating performing arts centers in the United States, it fell on hard times in the 1960s, but was ultimately saved by the young visionary Harvey Lichtenstein.

Through his efforts, Lichtenstein’s Next Wave Festival stole the standard of progressive performance from Manhattan and launched an unstoppable revival of Brooklyn that still continues to this present day and continually seeks to expand its audience.

This graphic approach was created by partner Michael Bierut of Pentagram, a renowned graphic designer recognized for his numerous awards, including over a hundred to his name. Through his graphic approach for Next Wave, he was asked by BAM to create something permanent. From now on, they wanted everything from a poster to a 36-page mailer subscription to small space ads. What they didn’t want, though, was a logo.

Through this restriction, Michael hit on the idea of using one singular typeface, Workhorse News Gothic, but it had its own twist. He decided to take the approach that the type would be cut off as if it couldn’t fit the frame. He would go on to present this idea to Harvey and his other colleagues, Jaren Brooks Hopkins and Joe Melillo.

Through this, it was suggested that BAM crossed borders and couldn’t be contained to one singular stage, showing that this design choice was economical as well, with the 4-inch-tall letters’ ability to scale down into two inches worth of space.

Through Michael Bierut's design practice, he demonstrates a truly inspirational system that allows for the use of large type to be versatile, readable, and scalable, with its ability to fit even in cramped applications, such as newspaper advertisements.

After the first of the new Next Wave materials were completed, Pentagram extended the same principles to BAM Opera, BAM's spring programs, and a wide variety of special events.

Michael Bierut shares in his published book titled “How To” that he recalls a designer named Tibor Kalman, a late design genius, had been in a very similar scenario as he had been in. Tibor had been asked to design a brand identity for a museum; instead of creating a logo, he met with the museum and handed them a book of typefaces.

As he did, he simply told them to pick one and use it over and over again, and if they did for long enough, they’d have an identity. Michael writes in the book that through this, he was convinced the most important characteristic for a great brand is consistency.

This is different from sameness. He writes that sameness is static and lifeless, while consistency brings responsiveness and vibrancy, adding that working with one typeface for BAM is just another model of consistency when it comes to design.