Pentagram - Luke Hayman - The business of Pentagram

hello so thank you for being here and staying so late this evening first thing I want to say is I thought Anton and Irene were amazing and I thought that was a phenomenal talk and I wish I'd gone before them and now I have to follow them so that was bad idea so the other thing I want to do is thank Paola and Olga for inviting me here they invited me maybe only a couple of months ago and I thought you know I never been to Warsaw so this is kind of exciting and they said well we're just two were a couple of students we just sort of started doing this a couple of years ago a little conference and then they told me they were gonna be like two thousand people here so that it's it's kind of remarkable what they built here and I'm right from day one have been really impressed by how they've marked did the conference did the little videos and a web site and just I think this is one of the most impressive sort of new conferences I've been to ever and I've been to many many many conferences and spoke of many so congratulations to them so you should yeah okay so my wife was the one who said actually we have to go to Warsaw I really want to go to Poland so we came out here on Wednesday and we have been walking this whole city and visiting some amazing museums and restaurants and cafes and bars and all those things and it's a phenomenal city and it's a very exciting place to be we've met some wonderful people so we've kind of fallen in love with Warsaw so thank you for hosting us and having us here so partly to honor that I've decided to do half of this talk in Polish some are part of it in Polish we fought in English so let's try this dobri vichara that's what Google said it sounds like I think so anyway now back to English okay okay so pentagram is a really interesting company it's been around for forty five years a lot of people have heard of it it's it's international started in London blah blah blah so what exactly is it on the website there's a paragraph and it's pentagram is the world's largest independent design consultancy we think it is we don't really know we just wrote that so the firm is owned and run by twenty-one partners a group of friends which is unusual we're all leaders in their individual fields so we think bla bla bla ok so let's break this down it's important it the firm is owned and run by 21 partners so this firm is equally owned by 21 partners and all the partners are designers that's what makes this company pretty unusual as little asterisks there because one of relatively recent partners is Naresh from trend Donnie and London he comes from an advertising background as a copywriter and is involved in communications he's as creative as any of the other designers who actually make things he writes scripts he works with all of us so he is he's a designer in a looser sense but up until the rest join every one of us was either an architect or a product design or a graphic designer and we do lots of things so we have no CEO no chief technology officer or chief financial officer no chief marketing officer knows no C's well without C's Roni A's and B's so we do have a chairman the Chairman is not the boss of anyone that chairman only decides where we're gonna have our meeting this year and that's about it that's all they get to do they might chair chair the meeting make sure people sort of pay attention but not really no one listens to them we design architecture interiors books branding identities digital stuff exhibitions products posters websites we do a lot of things and that's really important to us too we're not specialists we refuse to be specialists I think we think it makes life a lot more interesting so so what have we designed a quick history lesson for about four years ago we turned 40 and naresh actually I wrote this lovely script and we put together this little movie and everything in this movie it's two minutes long has been designed by pentagram almost everything just so it's clear it's not immediately apparent so you might see an aeroplane there it wasn't designed by pentagram but you might see a train there and it was designed by pentagram you might see you and a London taxi some of the buildings like it's a big Museum for Holly Davison that was actually designed by pentagram so just wanted that to be clear at beginning so how do I make this movie the year is 1972 a child is born in a car on a petrol station forecourt he develops unusually quickly by the age of one he's walking by three he's shaving at six he picks up a pen and starts writing poems about tires he's the most exciting young poet of his generation his work makes headlines around the world but as cutting review in an Italian newspaper pushes him into a deep depression he seeks solace in long books stereophonic music train spotter reasonably-priced japanese car spotted he tries antidepressants he tries paracetamol eventually though he's cured by the therapeutic power of blending his life started he lands a summer job spell-checking electricity bills he's the most exciting spellchecker of his generation he's head hunted by a newspaper renowned for typographical errors and transforms its spell-checking operation suddenly he's a someone but he's invited to exhibition of banquets opening nights the catwalk shows and sporting spectacular he thinks he's made it but then he meets a girl with radiant skin browsing the P section at a record shop by day she's an architect with a love of violin concertos and punctuality but by night which is a wild child who leads the man into a life of trash to hotel rooms and sex in moving vehicles she steals his heart his money his air miles he's left with nothing sleeping in bus shelters with only the pages of a topical magazine to keep him warm the man turns to window cleaning he cleans the windows of meteor H cues sporting arenas and jumbo jets he's the most exciting window cleaner of his generation he becomes wealthy again shopping at the finest stores and eating the finest food and yet his heart remains broken he turns to the internet to find love dates follow with music lovers art lovers leather lovers and monkey lovers he's the most exciting Internet data of his generation but it's a paint and performance coatings chemist who finally captures his heart they conduct an affair in the great hotels of the he proposes she accepts wedding plans begin a venue is picked champagne purchase and readings chosen from Isaiah and Winfrey it's a perfect day on honeymoon in the Maldives the man sees a small monkey killed by a falling coconut profoundly affected he decides to give his time more generously to charity and pink pictures for old people in his community the man who was a boy is happy it's his 40th birthday the man settles down in front of the computer with some own label Chianti and a light snack to look at images from his past he sees a good laugh and sipping his surprisingly delicious wine the man wonders what lies ahead okay so that was our anniversary video okay so that was then what do we do now I'm not really gonna tell you because it's on our website and you guys have the Internet so but this is our homepage at the moment so this gives you a sense of the range of what we do signage motion exhibitions branding for fast food for beverages trains lots of books we love to do books Leafs by Snoop we do packaging for marijuana if you like drugs we do Harry Potter franchises a lot of culture booze merit more marijuana look at that huge telecom companies like Verizon wine universities MIT fashion interiors Shake Shack exhibitions down there lab attend 20th century 21st Century Fox little movie there for an architect for MoMA winter windows logo big stuff we do and very small stuff we do we really do stuff for lots of money for really big corporations and stuff for free stuff for pennies we do whatever you want royal academy code academy silly movies graphics for big american football teams more wine more a lot of wine here a lot of booze and you can realize that Saks Fifth Avenue some books we published some weird movies universities buh-buh-buh-buh some old projects like DNA D okay so who is pentagram that's what we do so when I got out of college when I studied in college in the mid 80s got out of college and 88 I worshiped pentagram I thought they were really you know whenever I looked through textbooks before the internet I saw work and I liked it and and very often it was done by pentagram so to me they were kind of like the Beatles because each each member of the band you knew it wasn't just a the the lead singer of the lead guitarist he didn't really know who the you know you know the Smiths you know Johnny Marr you know Morrissey but can't remember the drummer's name of the bassist name so these guys everyone knows all for the Beatles so I always thought Penn Crammers like that everyone was important and interesting and they did different things so so it started actually in 62 three young cool guys Fletcher Forbes and Gil and they were cool at the time they're really hot tiny agency the big agents we would come to them if they had a difficult or super creative problem they'd come to them and they were just sharing space and that photograph apparently was shot by I don't know if it's this photographer a photographer who shot the Beatles so they kind of were the Beatles they were cool and groovy so then this guy Theo crosby joins an architect the other three graphic designers Bob Gale leaves he doesn't complicated reasons he doesn't want to work with a company with architects takes too long to do architecture and then these two other guys join movin : ski and Ken Grange and it becomes pentagram there are five of them and there they are very cool still then sky John McConnell join so this is to me the kind of key pivotal moment of pentagram that makes pentagram different from almost every other design firm of its size imagine a company called pentagram which is quite well established and doing getting big clients like BP and Cunard they they're pretty the you know the hot shot of the time in the 60s when there wasn't that many design firms around so there really were becoming you know very important agencies and growing and they find this guy John McDonald who was a friend of theirs who had this little studio and it would draw type and things like that and they asked him to join and instead of doing what many traditional companies do when you grow which is this is on a pyramid system like okay we started it it's our company we want you because you're talented and you can bring your own little business but you're below us right that's that's what most people do because why wouldn't you you started it you took the risk it's your name on the door why would you suddenly bring someone in as an equal partner but that's what they did and the trouble at pyramids is after a long time and I'm not talking a few years after many many years and you see this with some very interesting design firms the top folks get older they retire whatever very often they start to crumble because the people underneath who don't feel as loved as they feel they should be because they're doing just as much work as the partners or their owners they start to can leave or it just starts to sort of not remain as sharp as it is as a studio so I've seen that we've all seen that another thing that typically happens to businesses they get they grow they become very successful they win lots of awards and then they sell out right they sell to one of the big agencies like WP P or Omnicom or there are a few of them now that have owned many many digital agencies of design firms and they get bought out so to me and I sweeten to someone who yesterday McKell about this yesterday who someone I believe he's talking tomorrow has a really interesting software company that he's built himself and I said so you must have offers right we want to buy you out you see yeah yeah I've been talking to people in California and Silicon Valley and he said but I don't want to do it because I leave I'll lose control so and that's what happens you you you get bought by an agency by one of the huge huge conglomerates and you know to us a pentagram it's sort of like you know being absorbed by the Death Star so that's kind of what we feel about that but and what happens is people get bought they stay there because they have a contract to stay for three years five years then very often they leave and start their own thing again so it's not going to happen to pentagram partly because it can't because we're all equal owners and so it said that begin we're all equal owners so financially they'd have to pay us so much money times 21 partners to make that happen so what quite a kind of sort of insured against that happening because it makes no economic sense to pay the kind of money that would it would take so 77 Ron Herron of really famous architect joins Hillman joins he's a editorial designer design nova theo crosby moves to new york who starts a new york office gets his guide Peter Harrison to join so the New York office starts to build Heron leaves Pelham joins Pelham leaves Heinrichs Heinrichs and shaker rejoin at San Francisco the first woman Browne and manasseh join and so I'll just go through this quickly fertile joins more in New York this is important Rushworth becomes a partner so Rushworth work john Rushworth worked for pentagram became an associate and started doing so much work and handling the jobs himself and you know working with the clients directly that they make him a partner from within that's pretty unusual does happen now when i was just out of college in new york michael barratt joined he came from the Vignelli studio pretty well-known in New York and then Peter Savile joined in England and Peter Sabo was one of my heroes in college he designed all the new order covers and Joy Division and the factory records so very very cool so I thought that's kind of interesting because some of these other guys were getting older and that they brought in someone who was so sort of on the cutting edge and remains on the cutting edge actually Peter said was a brilliant designer then in New York an architect in Bieber and a record cover designer Paula Scher joins she took books but mostly famous for her record covers and posters okay more people joining Alan Fletcher leaves one of the founders he leaves Peter Savile leaves doesn't work for everyone this model pentagram is not the right place for everyone you'll see people come people go another associate from within this time in the New York office Michael Garrity is promoted to partner who as a spelling mistake they're sorry Colin Forbes and moving Polanski Lee a couple of the the original Thea Crosby one of the original partners dies Peter Harrison Neil shaker E David Potter leave the last so far the last associate is promoted in the London office Eustace Ola he then a couple years later goes off to start the Berlin office Bob Brunner joins he's a product designer he joins the San Francisco office he came from Apple he's the guy who hired Johnny I've it's pretty cool Lorenzo F Keller and Angus Highland join an architect and a book designer joining in London Ken Grange leaves the product designer from the original five but Miller joins New York couple April crimen Fernando Gutierrez DJ stout DJ's help joins in Austin Texas the Austin office was started because Lal Williams was in the San Francisco office and he had a fight so he was pissed off and he said I'm quitting I'm moving back to Texas where he's from and they said you know have to quit just open a Texas office and that's how that's how pentagram expands by people having fights or deciding like Eustace who's originally from Germany so he said I want to live back in Germany I'll bring up my family in Germany in Berlin so they said all right do that so there isn't a big kind of strategy like we need to conquer America we need to go to the west coast we need to be in Asia there's it's really just people around the table saying I don't know let's open a New York office I've always wanted to live in New York and that's how it happened April crimen doesn't stay long she actually had an LA office for about a year I think the sauce transfer joined but one of the first sort of really digitally focused partners we've had William Russell joins architect brilliant architect John McConnell would he put a leave leave a good year I join very good year with Dom Lipper and Harry Pearce people leave people leave after I join everyone leaves then two more people join people leaves stressfull leaves three women join very good two in the New York office one in London London's first female partner and then the last year the end of last year Jodie and Luc joined pentagram so you'll hear a little bit more about them in a minute so this is pentagram today and we meet twice a year once in the United States side of the Atlantic it would be mostly in the United States can be in the Caribbean or occasionally South America and then in May or June we we do the meeting in the Europe side so mostly in Europe occasionally we went to Marrakesh which is not in Europe see in Africa so this was last couple of five months ago in Austin Texas so this is the all 21 of us why is he called pentagram so they couldn't they couldn't agree what to call the company when there were five of them because there were too many names so apparently Alan Fletcher was reading a book on witchcraft and that's it that's why she called pentagram I think that's what they say but they were hippies it was the early 70s this is why there's this interesting business model we have how does a business work all right I'm going to show a little video about this is quite an old video so there are people here are no longer partners there are people here look older now including me but this tells you a bit about pentagram in a kind of concise way I think I usually describe pentagram as having a kind of socialist capitalist model we're partners manage their own teams and profit centers and they share profits including what's great about pentagrams somehow the structure has fixed it so that the people really are important I mean if you look at our letterhead there are no slogans it doesn't say you know fine design since 1972 it doesn't say what our disciplines are it doesn't say grab the design architecture digital design product design the only thing it says outside of the name pentagram of the address are the names of people the pentagram exists for the bait fruit for the partners to do the work they want to make by the way they want to make it and that's what the platform's all in the get to you can you can use the resources you can collaborate you can use the shared intelligence you can ignore it all I'm you know I'm running a relatively small team but I have this organization behind me that allows me to approach bigger clients and that makes me visible to bigger clients which is beautiful there's no managing partner there's no home office and those are questions we get a lot like what would the Home Office think about this or where's the head guy or something and the answer as always no and when it had five offices in 1819 partners partners retire new partners come into the mix and it's a constant process of renewal if anyone ever asks what's your five-year plan or ten-year plans or pentagram well the answer in my view is who's the next partner that's you know worrying about who the next partner is is it's really what our business plan is about because if you get that right everything else follows so this is a question we get a lot because we share profits equally so then it's usually followed with this question because it's kind of unusual right look there are lots of firms with partnerships like law firms but none of them do what we do which is add up all the profits hopefully this profits at the end of the year and split them equally even if someone made a loss that year and someone made a million dollars it all gets even now so this is unusual so unusual that the Harvard Business Review have done a case study on this and if you'd like to you can go buy it for $5 if you'd like to you could buy the same thing for 895 I've no idea why they're two different prices so it's kind of interesting model and it's it's something that has been going for now forty four years so it's so unusual we measure our profits we look at our numbers like most businesses do sort of every month and then we meet properly to really look at stuff every six months and see how it's going and at the end of the year as I said it's equally divided but within each office we don't share with London London doesn't share with us it's partly because it's incredibly complicated because of international currencies and partly because the businesses are just different and the cost of living is different and things like that for me coming in I didn't have my own company when I came and I worked for a magazine I was a design director at New York magazine I came in I had no clients actually just as I was coming in I won the redesign of Time magazine and I pull a share help me do this to win this project and I did it so I had one client so after a couple of years you become what's called a full partner the first couple of years is really just a kind of trial period but after a couple of years I was sharing equally with Paula Scher and Michael Beirut and Jim Bieber Michael Gehrke and Lisa Straus Fred and Abbott Miller people who've had businesses for years decades big healthy businesses doing architectural projects signage for airports some of the big projects Citibank can you imagine how much profit doing the identity fees for Citibank would make so I was a little magazine designer I've done a few other things along the way but essentially that's what I did so great news for me right I get to share so the interesting thing is this chart again which used to be called in some of the partners meetings used to be called the penis chart for obvious reasons so if you're sitting in a meeting with these folks who you respect like your friends and their penis is longer than yours you feel bad everyone in the room wants to have the longest penis you know that feeling right so so what does this mean so it's interesting that people who I talked to say you know I went in there very relatively young designer with a small business and I got to share profits with these big guys and they're like that's fantastic you're so lucky actually you feel really bad about it and so it motivates you it motivates you to get more business and work harder and do all that it's a real motivator so the other thing it does which is really nice about the system is that because no one's gonna get more than anyone else at the end of the year we're motivated to help each other so if someone's not busy and someone's too busy they get they can pass work along they can share clients they can win the project and and sort of together and then kind of pass the work on to you so it's it's a very very interesting system so we're always competitive with each other everyone wants to have the biggest number but at the same time we really all want to be as close as possible to each other and it doesn't happen every year sometimes people go several years and not do very well but over the long run the idea is the concept is when you're having a bad year someone else can help you when they're having a bad year you can help them it's it's quite remarkable but it's not just all about money that's the interesting thing when someone has there are some people some partners who can consistently make more money and you think so why don't they just leave they can have their own company they can make keep all their profit instead of sharing it okay so really it's not all about money so what else is it about reputation prestige so I'm a little magazine designer but I get to do work on international brands these this doesn't pay as much as Citibank I promise you but it pays well enough but it's Time magazine or Stern magazine so it's good for the company to have that on their website and they respect it and they think it's an important client important work so sure Paula Scher has been doing this work for the public theater for maybe 18 years I think it's a big part of New York City the culture of New York City the public theater she's done this for free for eighteen years because it's important so it's not about money it's not about you have to take that project because it's gonna make more money we turn down projects that make more money we don't care because it's important for us to do other things because we do have to make money long term thinking okay this is a project Paula did for Shake Shack this brand started I'm not sure if they have Shake Shack over here yet I'm sure it's coming this this brand started as literally a little almost like a food truck in Madison Square Park done by a great chef Danny Meyer and as a favor Paula did the graphics for this Shake Shack is now in airports around the world that's in Dubai it's in Europe it's it's in London it's several in New York's all across the states the company went public last year so you never know where a project is going to go so it's not all about money every year okay what else long-term careers okay architects architecture is really difficult we really want to have architects as partners the part is part of our group as part of the partnership but the career of an architect is really different from a graphic designer you can be very successful very quickly as a graphic designer you can be 30 and be winning all the major awards you can be getting huge clients as an architect it's less typical to give you an example Zaha Hadid who died a couple of weeks ago considered mid-career right it's tragic that she died brilliant architect she was 65 Lord Norman Foster is 80 I think REM koolhaas from OMA kind of edgy younger sort of starchitect 71 Frank Gehry 86 so have you come you know that that's the sort of trajectory of an architect so a pentagram we're trying to figure out how architects can stay and develop their careers and stay at pentagram so it's it's complicated but that matters to us tremendously socially minded work so Harry Pierce has been doing this nonprofit called witness was started by Peter Gabriel in the 90s he's been doing that for free obviously forever for instance the beginning being pod the community is important to us so some of the partners dom Lipper dominic Lipper in london has been doing identity work for the London Design Festival for about 10 years it's important for us to be part of design community and we've been doing October for six years this is a sort of festival of architecture in the month of October in New York City my team's been doing that we're on our sixth version of that what else writing we published a lot Michael Beirut he writes a lot other place as well he's always interviewed in The Wall Street Journal the New York Times but Miller a really brilliant writer DJ stout and Texas just published his book other things we like Paula Scher she paints maps she just had a big show and a prestigious New York City gallery was phenomenal these things are huge they take hours to paint marina Willard in the London office has just got a kick stunned Kickstarter project funded a couple of months ago a story about her family actually I think her grandfather was one of the twelve Jewish families to survive the Nazi occupations in Prague so she's got a great Brazilian cinematographer to work with her on that so that's interesting it's not gonna make us lots of money but we want it to happen obviously teaching moderating speaking that's important to us the office culture we have a lot of parties we host events we publish books from the early 70s John McConnell mid-70s John McConnell started this thing called pentagram papers I think we've now published 46 of them and they're just about many different things whatever the whatever the partner decides they wanted publish could be a collection of photographs it could be stories it could be about typography it's always design related it's not about promotion at all they get given out as gifts to friends we hang flags this is our New York office this is a flag to introduce II do para when he was a new partner so the partnership culture as I said we make twice a year they called the IPC is an international policy committee which is a terrible name so this this was a book that was self-published by pentagram there were these pictures taken by amazing photographer in London Phil Sayer and this is what I thought these meetings were like and actually they are there's there's a lot of sitting in conference rooms going over figures and talking and presenting a lot of debates on a very serious analysis looking at design and books and then when I joined I found out what really happens shopping going out eating and stuff like that so it's actually a way of building community way of meeting it's there's a lot of serious boring stuff but there's a lot of just talking and hanging out with each other it's really important that pentagram retains this sort of idea of what it is in culture so what's it like day-to-day that was my week last week we're really busy we're always doing stuff I'm sure it's like your day so along the left in the New York office this is what we call partners row all the partners sit in desks like that my desk is at the very end no private offices so that's part of our culture we actually pass each other whenever we're there we talk we look at what's on each other screens etc it's really it's deliberately set up like that same in London no one has a corner office no one has a door to close our teams are just spread around the building that's Emily with her team downstairs conference rooms typical stuff so people ask this question a lot how do you choose a partner okay so I'm just gonna this is really one of the most important things we do at these policy meetings it was gonna play this bit again what's your five-year plan or 10-year plan depends grown but the answer in my view is who's the next partner that's you know worrying about who the next partner is is is really what our business plan is about because if you get that right everything else follows so that was John Rushworth one of the most senior partners now has been part of the company for a long time and was actually the first associate to be made a partner and was the youngest partner I think he was in his early 30s amazingly so so it's really important so three ways to become a partner either you have your own little business and we say oh I didn't come and join us or you're working another company and say what do you leave that company become a partner very unusual that happened to me and it happened to DJ stout who was another magazine designer but he'd been designing books he'd been doing a lot of judging and speaking and talking and being part of the community same with me and then you can be like John be promoted from within forms type organ which one of my partners in London says born in captivity or just kind of funny so who gets asked to be a partner only designers apart from Naresh which I talked about he's creative but he's not technically a designer people who design things we don't it's always nice to have someone with the specialty Emilie Oberman came into the New York office she had a lot of experience with motion graphics and doing title sequences for things like Saturday Night Live if you've heard of that and movies and things like that people who have their own company as I mentioned usually good idea people have their own company except me and DJ I said that already people have a reputation people who've won awards that's how you get to hear about people people in their 30s typically because you're at this point where you've been running your own company for a few years but you're not too big and you're not too settled you're still open to change there are exceptions Domon Harry in London were really well established with the company called Lipper Pierce Emily Oberman had a company called number 17 but her and her partner split up and so suddenly she was available and so that's at least at this point that we don't like to take a company with two or three partners and just take one it doesn't seem right we don't do that so these two so usually we were looking for single person owned companies but harry and dom they were two out of three partners they'd already split up with their third parties partner so they could come in Luke and Jodi the new young brothers who have come in they had their own company people with ambition obviously it's it's it's stressful at penn graham you have to work really hard you compete you're competing sort of competing and sharing with people who are very successful so it's it's not for the weak of heart people who are financially successful but no not as much as you think we've looked at people we have brought in people as partners who actually had small businesses they didn't have you know compared to the prophets of pentagram we're making that far far lower profits but we thought with pentagram sort of help the help of the pentagram brand and the exposure that you get and the the network that we have all of our partners together we have huge network that these people are so talented that given the right opportunities they could make as much money as they needed to make and whether it would take two years or five years or seven years that's fine so people who make things we love people who actually make things people who write it all can teach people are involved DNA was actually founded partly by Alan Fletcher where a lot of us are members of our G AHEA in New York tDCS architecture stuff people who'd like to have dinner with sounds weird there are a lot of people that we know and meet who maybe you think they'd be good partner but if they don't sort of fit well socially we kind of don't want them to be in our team because we go away for days at a time and these kind of interesting places and you know if you don't like the person you don't want to be in business with them even if they make so much money it's it's doesn't matter so he's not asked to be a partner so people are financially motivated above all else we have comments like why aren't you in you know Beijing you could make so much money out there or something like that that's not what has motivated pentagram we love to make money but it's not the reason why we do what we do I think some of the partners could make a lot more money elsewhere if they went on their own etc but they want to be designing they're not in it too a bit like the previous presenters it's not just about money it's about your lifestyle it's about your life as a designer not people with cloaks Paula Scher says there's don't want people with the Cape so she's referring to people with big egos and a pen crown we have lots of big egos but they're not so big that they have to be the number one star in the room so that's the the challenge with pentagram especially if you've had your own company I'll talk about this in a second that suddenly you can be sort of under the bigger umbrella certainly it's your name is not on the front door so not people with cloaks not that they do a lot of Star Wars references well I become a partner so people ask this question if you do have your own company and you are successful why become a partner so here's an example of someone I work with maybe eighteen years ago Albert Miller who's now a partner in New York when I worked for him he was he was kind of like Fletcher Forbes and Gil in London he was winning many many awards super talented super getting the best really interesting projects magazines books exhibitions identities this was an exhibition for Rolling Stone magazine a traveling exhibition of all the covers very cool project you took the logo and made it dimensional this was 18 17 years ago very cool three weeks ago he just opened this exhibition working with an a partner in London will Russell together they've done this exhibition which is the Rolling Stones so going from Rolling Stone magazine to the Rolling Stones so they worked with a met with the Rolling Stones several times to do this mega exhibition that opened a couple of weeks ago in London at the Saatchi Gallery it's then going to move to Chicago I think or New York's gonna go around the world so this the point is from going for a tiny exhibition to a mega sort of world-class exhibition world traveling exhibition is a reason to come to pentagram you you're allowed you're sort of empowered you're you suddenly have the wherewithal to work on big projects and big say okay I think pentagram can do it even in reality habits team isn't very different from 18 years ago when I worked with him there were five six of us his team is now maybe seven now in in in New York but because he can work with wills team in London because he has the support of the whole company he could do these really big projects and a funny little story our Ron Wood the drummer from the Rolling Stones used to work as a graphic designer for Bob Gill at Fletcher Forbes and Gilman so and Bob Gill said to Ronnie Wood I think you like drumming better than you like designer designing so I think you should go and be a drummer and they're still friends to this day which is kind of cool story okay five minutes okay it's a quick video this was just released a couple of weeks ago design week the British design magazine started doing these little mini documentaries and they interviewed Jody and Luke that our two newest partners and so this kind of is very relevant and very very recent which is good so let me just play this I think our initial feeling when we were first asked to join pentagram was probably shocked about and beyond that everything else it really wasn't something that we ever expected to happen maybe after that initial feeling we felt validated to a degree because there's a small studio you're kind of working and avoid working in a small team of people and apart from your immediate peers you haven't got much to measure yourself against and so even being asked in that first instance was the kind of measure that we we've been on the right path and that we were doing right things pick my first impressions when visiting the building at least were the same as most people's which she reached worth by this kind of amazing sense of scale and they're kind of the age of the building is it's a beautiful space and it's also very calm kind of quiet space at least on the ground floor you don't you're not really aware of the activity and the kind of the buzz of upstairs and they are quite different spaces you realize how upstairs is a really kind of busy kind of really work orientated space over2 it's gonna come sit down here with the kind of activity of upstairs work really well together one of the most unique amazing things about pentagram is there's no kind of single head all the partners kind of equally control and share through the business organization and you feel that very much when you join that when you come here nobody's really prepared anything for you so it's kind of pretty DIY each of the partners in the studio space upstairs has a table which of varying sizes according to the size of their team so when we moved in we packed up her old studio moved everything in here and we had a great table space back walls based on some shelves ready for us moving in so in that sense it is it was pretty easy to get set up here in terms of facilities there are everything you've got any designer could wish for really we we've got a workshop downstairs which is fully kitted out with lathes and then band saws etc we have the photo studio and then upstairs there's a cutting board it seems for every you know really for something and lots of light voices they written there really is everything that we can possibly need here to do - be creative - very experimental and to do all the work that we need to which compared to our old studio is it is amazing because you know previously all we had was a bag of tools in the corner and then a three laser printers so we it's a luxury situation in terms of facilities it doesn't feel like one big company it doesn't feel like it's a corporate business in any way shape or form it really feels like it's a collective of smaller studios with the shared vision ish and that was really special it feels very open it feels very like anything could happen and yeah it just doesn't feel corporate which I know doesn't maybe make sense because the building so all in it so it feels quite formal but it's kind of anything yeah but that I think the thing that's been we've really noticed is the culture of listening and the fact that everybody's voice is heard in the pentagram office which which from my small experience of working out other places isn't always the case and I think it's really important that everybody gets listened to and everybody's voice is heard sharing a space with the other partners is great we have access to such a wealth of knowledge and information within the building that whether it's health in terms of pictures and proposals or whether it's asking more detailed questions about what some things about some designs that you're working on there's a real collaborative shared working atmosphere amongst towards our partners so so we feel incredibly lucky having access that I suppose some of the subtleties and the nuances of how the space functions and how the kind of the people use your space will kind of emerge and at the moment here it feels like a very work orientated space where you can a calm space a very thoughtful space I just really appreciate that and I really appreciate that headspace I have when I'm here and that feels quite yeah special I know I'm aware of that every day that I can think so the interesting thing that I think you can get from that is that the model of pentagram is up allowing the partners to still design and not do business so this is a quote from an essay Alan Fletcher helped to establish a model of combining commercial partnership with creative independence so strength in numbers this is this is my team in New York I've got seven partners to bounce ideas off and get a device from I've got 13 others around the world and I do send them email saying can you help with this it really it's because we know each other as friends through these meetings a full-time accountancy star for for two full-time IT staff a super which looks after the building two chefs we have lunch for our staffs three days a week in London it's five days a week three people on the front desk Tracy so Tracy is has been with Michael Beirut just about to retire she's been with Michael Beirut for about 25 years and we have questions about signage complicated things that we don't really know about on my team we haven't done web signage we literally go down and say what does Tracy think she can save us days of research so basically my team is now nine people but I have the resources of a huge huge large firm which is incredible is it perfect no long-term planning is challenging we go to these meetings and we have ideas and then we go back to our offices and we get sucked into the day-to-day of actually running our business that's a good thing about having a CEO because they can remove themselves and think about the big picture we don't have that product development Edea Parra came from a small studio called the map office which he started he developed his own software programs aciem CMS system it was brilliant it's hard to do it in pentagram and so we're trying to figure that out how we can make that happen it's hard to do it because you're looking at your numbers every six months in every year and things like that take longer to develop and require a level of risk there are a lot of cooks like can you imagine 21 partners if you've ever worked for an architecture a large architecture firm as a designer which we do we work for a lot of Architects if you're redesigning their website or a day their identity it's a nightmare trust me Eddie had to redesign our website it took three years partly because there are too many damn cooks everyone has an opinion so and then the exit strategy people work at pentagram they give their life to pentagram pentagram is their life and then how do you leave it's kind of complicated and sometimes you might not want to work as hard or as long or you might want to do other things and yet every month you're looking at that chart every year every six months you will give that chart so that's something we're figuring out now but all in all it's a it's a pretty pretty great company so that's junk you

Channel: Element Talks

Views: 23,947

Rating: 4.9210525 out of 5

Keywords: Luke Hayman, Pentagram, studio, design, partners, business, model, interesting, unique, partner, new york, london, pentagram studio, famous, designer, new yorker

Id: LD8viW9Vmpw

Length: 52min 40sec (3160 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 29 2016