Profile - Susan Yelavich

Pentagram, founded in 1972, is one of the best known and most influential graphic, product, and architectural design firms in the world. Its partners are distinguished members of the international design community, consistently generating award-winning work of the highest quality.

Profile is the first ever book on Pentagram to include the design firm's newest partners - Fernando Gutirrez, D J Stout, Lisa Strausfeld and Abbott Miller. The book is a unique collection of essays on Pentagram's nineteen partners by best-selling authors, revered design critics, editors, and other well-known cultural figures. Eloquent and insightful explorations into the personalities, thought processes, careers and quirks of the different partners, the essays are generously illustrated with examples of both key projects and lesser-known works.

Profile not only sheds light on 19 individual talents, but also provides a comprehensive overview of the legendary firm that has influenced the course of design for over 30 years. Included is a foreword on Pentagram's history and evolution by Rick Poynor, one of today's most respected design critics and founder of the incisive British graphic-design magazine Eye.

Pentagram began with five partners; today, there are 19 working in London, New York, Austin, San Francisco and Berlin. With a list of clients that reads like a Who's Who of both the commercial and cultural worlds, the firm has over the last several years continued to produce influential, diverse, award-winning work: Justus Oehler's corporate identity for the Star Alliance, Fernando Gutirrez's editorial designs for Colors and Matador magazines, Lorenzo Apicella's mobile tourist pavilion for the Hong Kong Tourist Authority, Abbott Miller's exhibition design for Harley Davidson, and Lisa Strausfeld's media wall project for New York's Penn Station are but a few examples.

Since Pentagram's inception, the firm has taken care to document its work and evolution - Pentagram: The Compendium was published by Phaidon in 1993. Profile follows this tradition, showcasing both recent and classic projects, introducing new partners, and analysing the company's position in the design world as it embraces the new millennium.

However, Profile is far more than 'just' the latest Pentagram survey: rather than painting another group portrait, it takes a new approach and focuses on the individual partners who together make up the whole. In 19 individual and well-illustrated essays by acclaimed writers, critics and journalists, the different partners are profiled with incisive wit and insight. What emerges is a sharper than ever understanding of the unique talents whose commonalities and idiosyncrasies inflect the character of Pentagram as a whole.