BY JOEY SWEENEY

It was just about a year ago that the Metropolitan Museum of Art revealed its new logo and many, many people promptly lost their minds. This was their prerogative, of course, but even as someone who builds loving monuments to Things I Liked About The Past at any chance, I just couldn’t get into the vitriolic hatred of the new MET logo. In fact, I liked it: Its bold posture, and the way the letters simultaneously colluded with/melted into one another. (This last bit drove many typographers crazy in a very specific way that I imagine has only grown with time.)

Fast forward to today, as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts rotates in its brand new identity, fashioned by local design house The Heads of State. It may look slightly familiar to you. For the update, The Heads have employed a similar strategy that, again, I can’t be mad at and, in fact, really like. The letters avoid the “lazy” quality of the Met’s logo, but still push into each other somehow, as if the letters P and F are somehow leaning in hard on the two A’s. Importantly, though, the Heads have also employed a heavyweight typeface that busts out in a way that perhaps the Met doesn’t need to — PAFA has been on a (largely successful) campaign of sorts in recent years to remind people that it’s there, it’s fresh, it’s relevant.

But these are just first impressions, of course. The critical test is yet to come. The new logo, you see, hasn’t made its way to an umbrella just yet.