When I heard that Experimental Jetset were working on the new identity for the Whitney, I joked to my friend, coworker and (post-subculture, yet subcultural-seeming) bandmate Thien that I knew what it was going to look like:

“They’re just going to throw out some Helvetica and something insipid, probably a W.”

Thien said “no way”, and bet me a beer that “nobody would do something as stupid as that, even those dudes”.

I drank a frosty beer on a certain young man with high expectations’ tab in the Shin Okubo area of Tokyo two days ago and thought about the fact that its almost impossible to write something that spells out how awful EJ’s redesign is, because it is just. So. Fucking. Obvious… but people love obvious these days. It looks fresh. Clean. Akin to Michael Bierut’s comments about (paraphrased) “getting rid of the fussy old stuff and just having some big Helvetica spelling out two words: ‘Drink. Coke.'”

I grew up in New York State in the 70s and 80s – the “Drink. Coke.” era. Seeing stacked Helvetica everywhere was mind-numbingly boring. When I turned 9 years old, my parents took me on a stroll through the city and we spent the day walking, just poking around. Our meanderings brought us through much of Manhattan, eventually crossing paths with Chermayeff & Geismar’s iconic numeral nine situated in front of 9 West 57th Street. My parents asked me to stand in front of it – a serendipitous celebration of the 9 years on earth that I’d spent so far. I frowned, glowered, kicked at the half-inch steel exoskeleton of that nine and denied any association with it.

It’s one of those things I viscerally feel and remember: making a giant number nine to represent a building that was number nine was fucking stupid, and to try to sell that to me on my ninth birthday, equally so. However, apparently that big nine is iconic these days, or at least so it says on the C&G website, but I’ve always felt that it is dumb. Dumb, as in obvious. Dumb as in hackneyed. Dumb as in easy. Dumb as in crappy. Dumb as in pandering and ultimately un-redeeming.

And sure, it’s not Helvetica, that “9”, but apparently neither is Neue Haas Grotesk, but that is what they both are, ultimately, and the palette has already been cleaned of the ‘fussy old stuff’.

THE LINE

“Unfolding the line”, the title of EJ’s explanation of their new “W” mark family, ties in perfectly with the move to the entrance to the High Line – a ‘line’ and a Line: the ultimate synergy. EJ has stated that their flat W is “the line as a graphic agent of systems (and of anti-systems), as a signifier of modern art, as a sketch of things-yet-to-come, as a diagrammatic device, and as a representation of lineage (and thus of heritage)”.

This bit of their identity manifesto (in convenient, print-on-demand format) literally means nothing. Or everything. Or a banana. Or a tugboat. Or a banana tugboat. It’s the ultimate end-all, be-all affirmation/negation of meaning – be it temporal, spatial or sensical. It makes me want to punch myself in the head, because it is so easy to make dubious, reductive graphic design and I just make it hard on myself by wanting to see design work out in the world that has some complexity and just something more to it.

Also, it is not a line. It is a W. Gluh. Point line plane. It’s a few lines. Together. Making a W.

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

EJ’s comment on their approach to the typographic aspect of the Whitney identity is interesting, as it belies much of their sensitivity as typographers, “(Neue Haas Grotesk) comes in an enormous variety of weights and styles (from Extra Thin to Black), both as ‘display’ and ‘text’ variations. Because the redrawn version was originally intended as a newspaper typeface, it is designed as a fully functional font, with many alternate characters and numbers. However, for the word ‘Whitney’ (as well as the accompanying headings, titles and names), we have chosen to use only uppercase type (and in one particular weight as well).” This is of little surprise – EJ are the masters of the ultra-reductive palette, plus Americans don’t read anyway. The “typographic palette” is akin to walking into a Michelin-rated restaurant and ordering spaghetti with butter.

The thing that is really striking, however, is the desire of the designers to be associated with subcultures. This comes up a few times in the essay – they have chosen a redrawing of Helvetica because it reifies the museum’s position by aligning their identity (and ultimately, Experimental Jetset) with “No Wave, Conceptual Art, New York Punk, the downtown loft scene of the ’70s, and other subcultural phenomena”. Later in their project description, they mention the “‘DIY’-ideology of our studio”, which again strikes a chord: Experimental Jetset thinks that they are punk. Or hardcore. Or just simply: other.

I reckon that EJ have ultimately nothing to do with anything “other” – by invoking this term, I refer to a system of subcultural ideologies that is decidedly not status quo in nature, or at least was purported to be “back in the day”. The “other” was the fringe, the odd, the weird, the eccentric and the atavistic. The happy-go-lucky co-optation of DIY musics into consumer products that EJ has flogged to apparel manufacturers, notably their “Black” tee shirt design referencing the “Big 3” of heavy music (Black Flag, Big Black and Black Sabbath) have widespread appeal in that the genres of punk/hardcore, noise, (pre-)post-rock and stoner metal (and by association sludge and black metal) – some of the only logical choices for musics that have the appearance of being ‘anti-social’ in contemporary circles. (That this has been shored up in banana/tugboat tactics by making a Beatles tee shirt is exemplary of their ultimately totalitarian way of approaching culture. Their past appropriation of black metal imagery for their “Modernism” tee shirt is another example of cultural riffage that yet has no meaning beyond surface. It is akin to the early 90s rave/ovoid skateboard revolution logo spin, the working methodology kept alive most prominently by Shepard Fairey.)

There is nothing ultimately additive to the work of Experimental Jetset. They can be quotidian, but merely that. There is no there there. It neatly mirrors corporate American Modernism because it is the look of Modernism without the underlying prosocial intention.

Experimental Jetset invoke the ghosts of subculture to lend their work the aura of authenticity, yet do nothing interesting with it, much less anything truly content-based. Their work is all a gauzy veil of assured knowing – the cool guy or girl propping up the bar and nodding approvingly, yet whom has nothing of interest to say. As a Twitter-flattened global culture, we denizens of Earth are so infatuated with ‘authenticity’ that ultimately, we have forgotten about what is more important: quality.

SOMERY

Overall, my issue with this design, much like most of EJ’s design is that it is formulaic, simplistic, trite, and ultimately: banal.

Also, a W is not a grid. It’s a W.

(This mini-essay was generated initially as a comment to Francisco Laranjo’s essay on Design Observer “The Whitney Identity: Responding to W(hat)?” regarding the redesign of the identity for the Whitney Museum, but ran longer than the original post, so is published here instead.)