Celebration, Florida
I was for some time amazed by the title of Michael Beirut’s book “How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world.” from 2015. Isn’t it genius?
The book has been on my wishlist for quite some time and I finally bought it. Everyone considering to work in the field of design who gets this book in their hands is probably sold on the idea after a couple of pages in.
One project sparked my interest: “Celebration, Florida”. What is it? Michael Beirut writes 2005 in an essay:
“I worked on the graphics for Celebration, Florida. To this day, it remains one of my favorite projects.
Celebration has its origins, some say, in Walt Disney’s original vision for EPCOT, an acronym with a largely forgotten source: the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Disney conceived it as a real, albeit futuristic, working town with actual citizens commuting by monorail to a town center housed under a geodesic dome. This vision proved more durable as theme park than working town, but the dream lived on. And when Disney’s real estate experts decided that 10,000 acres of undeveloped swampland immediately south of Disney World might be worth more to the company as residential development, the time was right for Eisner to make Walt’s fantasy real.”
What I admire about the work that is true for practically every project from Pentagram: It does not only work for the specific target group, it is likeable by designers as well. The perfectly balanced compromise between minimal and simple, but still approachable and personal.
More image in this Bloomberg CityLab post.