Whitney Museum Response
1 min readJan 17, 2020
- My initial reaction to the identity system was that Experimental Jetset has a well thought out rationale behind the concept of the “responsive” W. It was interesting to also get a small taste of their process from initially a formal idea of using W and M, but then deciding to work with just the W.
- Responsive design would be an aspect or element that conforms to the space it is placed within (such as the W taking on different angles and shapes for different promotional items, signs, etc). The pros of this idea would be the flexibility and consistent new look of an identity system or design; however, with this flexibility the design could have the issue of being unrecognizable in certain forms if the consumer isn’t aware of the initial design.
- I would have to disagree with its criticisms of being “boring and plain” of the Whitney identity. Within minimalistic design, when done well, it strips a concept down to the “bare bones” and can leave the audience to take in the idea without elements that could detour them from that and leaves it for them to make of it what they will. With that as well, it was interesting reading into Experimental Jetset’s process one section they explained that “the zig-zag being a metaphor for a non-simplistic, more complicated … history of art” compared to their initial thought “it would be much easier to present the history of art as a simplistic line — but that’s not the Whitney”.
