**How does one describe Theo Crosby? Architect, graphic designer, editor, writer, sculptor. He designed early issues of Architectural Review, edited the arts magazine Uppercase, and was one of the five founders of Pentagram. Crosby, who would have turned 100 this year, seemed to have his hand in everything and know everyone. To celebrate his 100th birthday, Pentagram partner Michael Bierut (episode 5!) curated an exhibition of Crosby’s work (with research Tess McCann) at the Osh Gallery in London that closes next week. They also published a new edition of The Pentagram Papers that pulls 100 images from Crosby’s archive.

To help celebrate, we asked Michael a few questions about Crosby and his influence on Pentagram, and what designers working today can learn from the polymathic creative.**

Theo Crosby, one of the five original partners who co-founded Pentagram, would have turned 100 this year. You and Theo overlapped at Pentagram for three years: you joined as a partner in 1990 and he left in 1993, dying a year later. Did you get a chance to work with him at all? What was your personal impression of him back when you joined Pentagram? 

When I joined Pentagram, all five of the original partners were still active, and would attend the international partners meetings that we hold twice a year. I knew Colin Forbes well, since he had started the New York office where I work to this day. I knew Alan Fletcher and Mervyn Kurlansky less well, but I certainly knew their reputations as graphic designers. I also knew Ken Grange, who even then was a legendary British industrial designer, whose work was as ubiquitous in the UK as Henry Dreyfuss’s was in America. To me, Theo Crosby was the least known, not just because he was an architect, but because his reputation seemed difficult to pin down; he was involved in so many different things, it was hard to say exactly what he did, to be honest. As a person, he tended to sit through long arguments and speak only at the end, often with an understated but sharp remark that brought everyone back down to earth. He was both formidable but endearing.