What's Peter Saville done to the new Tate Modern?
Legendary graphic designer has colour coded and animated Herzog & de Meuron's latest addition
Peter Saville has created the graphic design identity for the new Herzog & de Meuron extension at Tate Modern which opens on June 17. Saville worked in collaboration with Paul Hetherington and animation, graphic and product-design studio Morph to depict the 1950s former power station as a translucent model with each department rendered in a different colour.
Saville's conceptual graphic representation of the conjoined buildings includes the subterranean tanks and subdivides the building into working spaces. "We wanted something more than an architectural render,' says the Tate’s Rob Baker. "And we know that Peter can do amazing things with colour and bring energy to inanimate objects and still images."
Morph’s Bill Holding said that it became clear pretty quickly that they would need to animate the plan for it to work. "Obviously the new addition to the building by Herzog & de Meuron has dramatically changed the overall silhouette, and in a way that can only be fully appreciated by viewing the building from numerous directions. It is so irregular in form that it has a distinctive profile which ever way you look at it."
"The work distills the overall building into its most basic geometric components, in such a way that the distinctive silhouette is still instantly recognisable."
Baker says it is still working on different uses for Saville and Co’s images and animations but insists they will become more and more visible as the opening date approaches. Check out the new building and Saville's animation at the Tate's site. And for more graphic design excellence take a look at A Smile In The Mind in the store.