The new logo for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had tongues wagging. So what’s in a logo, after all? Our sister paper Le Journal des Arts explored the topic last year with the graphic designer and typographer Philippe Apeloig, who has studios in Paris and New York and has designed logos for museums including the Smithsonian Institution, the Hirshhorn Museum and the new Louvre Abu Dhabi, as well as commercial clients like Showtime. Here is a condensed version of their interview.
Why and how do we create a museum logo?
The logo fulfils a need of existence, recognition, of a visual reference. From the point of view of logotype technique, it is no different to brand logos. It has to function as a sign of identification: immediate, unique, recognisable. In its vocation there can perhaps be a more adventurous, more experimental part.
What are three museum logos that have made an impression on you?
First and foremost, the logo created by Willem Sandberg for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in the 1960s. This idea of torn paper immediately creates emotion. And the association of three alphabets—Hebrew, Arabic and Latin—sends a strong message of universality. I also think of the logo of the Centre Pompidou by Jean Widmer, a pictogramme dating to the museum’s opening in 1976 and referencing its architecture; and that of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, created by Alan Fletcher in the 1980s—a typographical montage where the absent part of a letter creates an interaction with the rest. It is compact, synthetic and of a rare elegance.
These logos are 30, 40 and 50 years old. Is modernising a museum logo forbidden?
A logo should be timeless, by definition. In theory, reworking the logo of the Centre Pompidou or the V&A would be absurd. What the Israel Museum did recently with their logo was not very positive; they kept the forms of the logo but made it banal by removing the torn paper motif. When I was the artistic director of the Louvre, from 2003-07, it was under discussion that I would rework the logo created 20 years earlier by Pierre Bernard, inspired by the sky seen through IM Pei’s new pyramid, but I refused.
On what basis did you design the 2005 logo for the Musées de France (museums officially recognised by the French state), which have very different buildings and collections?
The logo had to be a label. I started from the idea of a frame, which eventually became an architectural plan. The letter m in lower case is placed in the centre like something modest but preserved—delicate, carefully conserved but accessible. It’s the very definition of a museum room, an open space, a free invitation to discovery and knowledge. Successful logos are like a text abstract, a concentrate of ideas. By being illustrative, you run the risk of being quickly out of date. You must keep this conceptual dimension that doesn’t say everything but is strong enough to be remembered.
Interview by David Robert, translated by Victoria Stapley-Brown