89. PENTAGRAM DESIGN, SAN FRANCISCO
With their well-appointed gift shops, corporate museum exhibitions are frequently guilty of offering visitors little more than thinly veiled agendas to sell product. But when San Francisco’s Boudin Bakery undertook to create a 26,000-square-foot flagship and museum at Fisherman’s Wharf, Pentagram Design—which created the exterior and interior signage, way-finding system, restaurant and retail graphics, and the museum exhibition —encouraged the company to emphasize its inextricable link to the city by the Bay.

As the city’s oldest continually running business—a culinary icon since the early days of the Gold Rush—Boudin suffered no shortage of content for its exhibition. Pentagram’s challenge was to distill 150 years of history through visual means that would appeal to San Franciscans, tourists, and foodies alike. “We had to walk that thin line between entertainment and education,” says creative director Kit Hinrichs.

Proof of the firm’s steady footing on that particular tightrope lies in the blurred distinction between the two. The museum offers, for example, lessons in bread-making science, displays of famous San Franciscan figures and foods, exhibits of early mining and baking tools, and a replica of the Boudin Bakery’s horse-drawn delivery wagon—each accompanied by rich histories and an extensive timeline. The result is that visitors acquire competency in culinary and California history effortlessly—as if by osmosis and through the prism of the company.

And in a very real way, the bakery’s connection to San Francisco spills out of the space and into the streets. In the tradition of the historic Ghirardelli sign—preserved as a landmark above the chocolatier’s old headquarters—the 5-foot letters of Boudin’s elegant signage can be seen from the Bay. In this sense, Boudin becomes part of the neighborhood visually, just as the bakery, founded in 1849, has long been part of the fabric of San Francisco’s cultural landscape.
Tiffany Meyers