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url: /design-history/chermayeff-and-geismar/
title: "Chermayeff & Geismar | Corporate Identity & Logo Design History | TGDS"
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# Chermayeff & Geismar | Corporate Identity & Logo Design History | TGDS

Chermayeff & Geismar
Design history · American corporate identity
The studio that designed the logos for everything else.
Chermayeff & Geismar — founded 1957, partnered since 1960, now Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv — is the New York design studio behind more enduring American corporate marks than any other. Chase Manhattan, Mobil, PBS, National Geographic, Smithsonian, NBC: the studio has drafted the visual infrastructure of postwar American institutional life.
Biography
Chermayeff & Geismar began in 1957 as Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar Associates — a three-partner practice between the English-born designer Robert Brownjohn, Ivan Chermayeff (then 25) and Tom Geismar (then 26). When Brownjohn returned to London in 1960, the studio continued as Chermayeff & Geismar and stayed that way for more than half a century. Ivan Chermayeff brought an impeccable pedigree: his father was the modernist architect Serge Chermayeff (1900–1996), and Ivan had studied at Harvard, IIT Institute of Design, and Yale School of Art under Alvin Eisenman and Josef Albers. Tom Geismar had trained at Brown and Yale, where he had overlapped with Chermayeff. The studio’s fortunes tracked the expansion of American corporate identity as a discipline. Chase Manhattan (1960) was the first major commission — an abstract mark for a conservative bank, a decision that set the template for the next three decades. Mobil Oil followed in 1964, with a full identity programme including gas-station typography, pump-island architecture and the Pegasus supergraphic. By the 1970s the studio had reshaped the logos of PBS, National Geographic, the Smithsonian, Pan Am and dozens more. In 2006 the partnership was joined by Sagi Haviv (b. 1974), an Israeli-born designer who had interned at the studio since 2003; Haviv became a full partner in 2013, at which point the studio renamed to Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv. Ivan Chermayeff died in 2017. Geismar and Haviv continue the practice from the same New York studio.
Design philosophy
The studio’s working position — codified in their 2011 book Identify — is that a great logo is appropriate, distinctive, and simple, in that order. Appropriateness first: the mark has to belong to this client’s business in this moment. Distinctiveness next: enough strangeness to stick. Simplicity last: everything that can be removed has been. “If you have to explain the logo, it’s probably the wrong logo.” — Ivan Chermayeff Three working habits extend from the premise. First, commit to abstraction. Chase Manhattan’s octagon was radical in 1960 because it described nothing literal — it simply identified the bank. The studio has spent sixty years defending that move against clients who want the logo to “say something”. Second, revise, don’t replace. Many of the studio’s most famous logos — NBC’s peacock, PBS’s profile, Mobil’s wordmark — were revisions of existing marks rather than greenfield designs. The working discipline is subtractive: take out what isn’t earning its place. Third, the manual matters as much as the mark. The studio’s identity guidelines — Chase’s 1961 manual, Mobil’s architectural specifications, NBC’s typographic system — are as influential as the logos themselves. A mark without a manual is a stranded object.
Key works
Chase Manhattan Bank (1960) — the octagon that made abstract bank identity mainstream. Chermayeff’s proposal argued that the mark should not reference keys, pillars, or any other banking iconography — it should simply be Chase’s. Chase agreed. The mark has outlasted every CEO and every merger. Mobil Oil (1964) — wordmark plus Pegasus supergraphic plus architectural system. The identity programme that taught the profession what “identity programme” meant. PBS (1971; revised 1984) — Geismar’s profile head, refined thirteen years later into the stacked profiles still used today. A lesson in what “refined, not redesigned” looks like. National Geographic Society (1979) — yellow portal. Still one of the most recognised marks in publishing. Chermayeff’s argument: a border is a metaphor for a Society that takes you elsewhere. NBC peacock (1986) — took John J. Graham’s 1956 peacock, removed the legs, simplified the feathers, and in the process made a mark that survives at favicon size. The studio’s clearest demonstration of the “revise, don’t replace” principle. Showtime (1997), MoMA (1964), Smithsonian (1965), Pan Am (1956, with Edward Larrabee Barnes), US Bicentennial (1976), Screen Gems (1965), Xerox (revised 2008) — a catalogue of the mid-century American institutional visual landscape.
Influence & legacy
Chermayeff & Geismar’s most durable legacy is a category: the abstract corporate mark as the default shape of American institutional identity. Every abstract mark for a bank, broadcaster or oil company since 1960 is working within a space the studio defined. The current generation of identity practice — Pentagram, Wolff Olins, Landor, Collins, Base — builds on assumptions the studio established. Ivan Chermayeff shaped a generation through his 37-year teaching post at Yale School of Art, where he overlapped with Paul Rand, Herbert Matter and Alvin Eisenman. Tom Geismar served as AIGA president in 1965–1966 and has continued to advocate for identity as a public good — libraries, zoos, museums, civic institutions — throughout the studio’s existence. Sagi Haviv’s continuation of the practice — including the 2014 Harvard identity, 2009 Armani/Casa, 2022 U.S. Open — is the clearest example in contemporary identity design of succession done well. The studio treats its own continuity the way it treats a client’s: revise, don’t replace.
Learn at TGDS
Chermayeff & Geismar sit squarely in the logo-and-identity core of our curriculum. If their work interests you, the most direct next steps are: Certificate IV in Design (CUA40720) — covers the logo and identity modules where C&G’s sixty-year case studies are set reading. 26 logos & their design evolution — our long-running case study on how famous marks (including several C&G redesigns) change over time. Paul Rand — a contemporary of the partnership and the designer against whose work theirs is most usefully compared.
Further reading
Ivan Chermayeff, Tom Geismar & Sagi Haviv, Identify: Basic Principles of Identity Design in the Iconic Trademarks of Chermayeff & Geismar (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). Steven Heller & Véronique Vienne, Becoming a Graphic Designer, chapter on C&G (Wiley). Steven Heller, “Remembering Ivan Chermayeff” (PRINT, 2017). Sagi Haviv, “The Three Principles of a Great Logo” (TED, 2017). Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv studio website.