The archive · Design & Visual · Strategic decision · 2022
Philadelphia Inquirer's A More Perfect Union wears the type of 1960s protest signs
Pentagram set the Inquirer's yearlong series on racism in lettering borrowed from protest placards, so the identity argues before a word is read.
The Philadelphia Inquirer · Pentagram
What it had to solve
In 2022 The Philadelphia Inquirer launched A More Perfect Union, a yearlong special project examining the roots of systemic racism in the US through institutions founded in Philadelphia. Pentagram was asked to create an identity and visual toolkit for the series, plus the print edition of chapter one, which ran as an insert with the 20 February edition of the newspaper.
How it works
In February 2022 The Philadelphia Inquirer began A More Perfect Union, a yearlong special project examining the roots of systemic racism in the US through institutions founded in Philadelphia. Institutions were the lens, but the series needed a public face that said what it was about before a reader opened an article.
Pentagram developed the identity and visual toolkit, along with the print edition of chapter one, inserted into the 20 February edition of the newspaper. The wordmark is set in a font based on the lettering used at protest marches in the 1960s, most directly the iconic 'I am a man' poster designed for the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike in 1968.
So the typography itself points to the civil-rights era whose unfinished business the reporting examines. The design gave a year of journalism one consistent voice in print and across formats, and the work was recognised at the D&AD Awards and filed in its archive as an example of editorial identity.
Why it lands
- The typeface does the framing: a wordmark in protest-sign lettering tells readers this is journalism about justice, not a neutral report.
- Borrowing the exact visual language of the 1968 placards ties each new story to the history it descends from.
- One toolkit carried a yearlong, multi-chapter project across print and digital, so the series read as a single body of work.
- The insert placed the design argument inside the newspaper itself, reaching readers who would not have looked for it online.
What it did
The yearlong project gained a single visual voice that ties its reporting on Philadelphia institutions to the civil-rights history behind them; the identity and its printed chapter were recognised at the D&AD Awards and filed in the archive.
What you can take
When journalism confronts a wound in the civic fabric, borrow the lettering of the people who first named it: the type carries both the argument and the history.
Since then
Chapter one arrived as a print insert with the 20 February 2022 edition, and the identity carried the yearlong series as later chapters followed. By setting journalism about systemic racism in the lettering of the movement that confronted it, Pentagram's wordmark became the project's shorthand, and the work was filed in the D&AD awards archive as a magazine and newspaper design entry.
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