Originally built for freight trains in the 1930s, the High Line is an elevated rail structure on Manhattan’s West Side that has been turned into the city’s most popular new park. The structure was saved from demolition by Friends of the High Line, a community based non-profit organization that advocated for the preservation and reuse of the structure as a pedestrian promenade.
Pentagram has been the graphic consultant for Friends of the High Line since the organization began its campaign, designing the group’s identity and various fundraising and promotional pieces to help gain support for the initiative. The designers created a simple, unique and highly recognizable identity for the group that subsequently became the logo for the park itself. Other projects have included the design of “Reclaiming the High Line,” a book about the history and potential for the structure, and “Designing the High Line,” an exhibition at Grand Central Station that displayed over 700 architectural proposals for the redevelopment.
Once the city ultimately approved the plan to revitalize and reuse the High Line as a pedestrian park and promenade, Pentagram was invited to work with the selected landscape architecture firm, James Corner Field Operations, to design the signage and environmental graphics for the structure. The program includes identification signage, maps and wayfinding. The High Line opened to the public in June 2009.
