A fun project we’ve been working on: the identity and promotional materials for the 10th annual Design Lecture Series at California College of the Arts. (Our concept was “Fresh Visions for Spring.”)
Assets include the series identity, poster, and digital brand assets. The banners (last image) weren’t produced, but we still had fun envisioning this application.
See Mark’s original sketch and inkings under Design is Play Process.
Four of our posters are included in the 2nd Cyprus Poster Triennial, now on view at SPEL, the State Gallery of Contemporary Art in Nicosia, Cyprus.
We have been impressed by the range and quality of the work in this exhibition, and are thrilled to be included!
We are honored to have our poster “Sláva Ukrayíni” awarded Gold in Graphis’ “Designers for Peace” international poster competition. All of the competition entry fees will benefit Ukraine humanitarian aid organizations.
We realize our contribution to this effort is minor. Nonetheless, we are committed to exploring non-commercial ways to extend our design practice. Designing agitprop is one of the ways.
Thank you to Kit Hinrichs, Jury Chair, for organizing this designer effort to support Ukraine.
Image: Antoine Coypel’s 1690 painting “The Baptism of Christ,” courtesy of LACMA.
Typeface: Thalweg Poetica by Ani Dimitrova.
BLKLAB—a.k.a. Black Lab—a trademark we designed for one of our favorite clients.
See Mark’s original inking under Design is Play Process.
The exhibit “Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest” opened tonight at the Letterform Archive in San Francisco. Curated by Silas Munro and Stephen Coles, the show features more than 100 examples of agitprop, including posters, broadsides, buttons, signs, and other ephemera. Two of our pieces are included: “Trump 24K Gold-Plated” (2016), and Mark’s “Patriotism ≠ Consumption” (BlackDog, 2002).
Mark gave the following remarks at the opening:
“I would like to start by acknowledging Silas, Stephen, Rob, and all of our friends at the Archive for including Angie’s and my work in this exhibit. Thank you!
“I have two quotes to share with you. The first is from the writer Joan Didion; the second is from the artist William Wegman.
“In her preface to Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion writes that she ‘had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act.’
“Later, I came across an interview with William Wegman in which he said, ‘When I paint I feel like I’m doing something irrelevant, but I no longer care.’
“For many of us—artists, designers, writers, curators—what we do can seem like an irrelevant act. I have learned that this is to be expected.
“I have been designing agitprop posters since 1990. Not one of them has ever prevented a war, or ended police brutality, or kept fools like Donald Trump from getting elected. One might reasonably conclude that this work proved ineffective and is therefore irrelevant.
“However, I’ve come to the conclusion that asking if my work is relevant is like asking if breathing is relevant. I work for the same reason that I breathe: to live.
“I find relevance in the very act of creation; in giving my thoughts a physical form—even when that form is ephemeral. Or imperfect.
“I also find relevance in the gathering and preserving of these ephemeral forms to establish a historical record or construct some larger narrative. Like this exhibit.
“We are lucky to have the Letterform Archive here in San Francisco. To everyone at the Archive: thank you for the work that you do. Your work is vital and relevant, and it makes relevant the work of many others, myself included. Thank you.”
See our “Trump 24K Gold-Plated” poster and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
Photographs courtesy of the Letterform Archive.
We are thrilled that our 2020 poster “#whiteliesmatter” is currently on view as part of the exhibit “New! Newer! Newly!” at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg. Thank you again to the 75 backers who helped Kickstart this agitprop poster (and two others) two summers ago!
Curator Dr. Julia Meer writes: “The Graphics and Poster Collection has grown continuously over the past 150 years and now encompasses some 400,000 works. This presentation focuses on new acquisitions and gifts that have recently entered the collection. They primarily consist of contemporary pieces, in recognition of the museum’s essential role in documenting current developments in design and preserving related artifacts for future generations. We collect designs that are noteworthy—due to their origin, mode of production, aesthetics or thematic content. Often ephemeral in nature, these products are closely related to the spirit of the times and thus simultaneously bear witness to political and social events and changes.”
See our “#whiteliesmatter” poster and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
Photographs courtesy of Dr. Joanna Klysz-Hackbarth.
Our entry to the Graphis “Designers for Peace” international poster competition. Impressively, 100% of the competition proceeds will benefit Ukraine humanitarian aid organizations.
Our design recontextualizes Antoine Coypel’s 1690 painting “The Baptism of Christ” to create a message of solidarity with Ukraine in the face of the current Russian assault. Coypel’s painting illustrates the biblical passage Matthew 3:16: “…and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove…”
We have taken the liberty of equating the painting’s original dove—the Spirit of God—as the bird-like golden trident from the Ukrainian coat of arms. In short, we are suggesting that Russia’s barbarous war is a wicked, ungodly act. We dedicate this poster to Kirill of Moscow, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, and a vocal supporter of both the war and of Vladimir Putin.
The patriotic phrase “Sláva Ukrayíni” means “Glory to Ukraine.” Source image courtesy of LACMA.
See our “Sláva Ukrayíni” poster and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
An unexpected surprise: the Museé des Arts Décoratifs (MAD) in Paris has accessioned our 2016 “Trump 24K Gold-Plated” poster! Although we have posters in collections in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland, this is the first museum in France to acquire our work. Vive la France!
See our “Trump 24K Gold-Plated” poster and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
We are excited to share our latest trademark for Touchstone Climbing! The Post will be opening in a former US post office in Pasadena, California.
See all of our logos for Touchstone Climbing under Design is Play Systems.
Our new identity for Class 5, the latest indoor climbing gym in the Touchstone Climbing pantheon! At 40,000 sq. ft., Class 5 will be Touchstone’s largest climbing gym in SoCal. The custom Class 5 wordmark features spurs on the letter “C” and number “5” as a subtle nod to the spider’s spinneret.
See all of our logos for Touchstone Climbing under Design is Play Systems.
Our “Tolerance” posters exhibited in Sisak, Croatia earlier this month. Organized by Gradska gallerija Striegl, 150 “Tolerance” posters were displayed to commemorate the Day of Anti-Fascist Struggle, June 22, 1941. (This is the date that the first armed anti-fascist unit in Croatia was founded.)
Angie worked with John Stevens who hand lettered the quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. Thanks to Mirko Ilić who created the Tolerance exhibit and invited us to participate!
See our “Tolerance” posters and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
—Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963
We launched a kickstarter campaign to produce three new limited-edition anti-Trump propaganda posters. Read about our campaign!
A dispiriting week: the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis as well as the video of a white woman in Central Park calling 911 to falsely claim that an African-American bird-watcher was “threatening her life.”
James Baldwin comes to mind—a passage from “The Fire Next Time” for each of these events. Regarding George Floyd, I think: “Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.”
As for Amy Cooper in Central Park: “The tendency has really been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.”
I designed and published the poster “Elvis Ain’t King” in 1992 as a response to the 1991 Rodney King beating and subsequent acquittal of the four L.A.P.D. officers responsible. The title is a reference to both Rodney King and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as to the Public Enemy lyric from “Fight the Power”: “Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me.”
The poster notes the disparities between the black experience and the white one; between heroes who are lauded (like Elvis Presley) and heroes who are murdered (Martin Luther King Jr.); between motorists who are simply arrested and those that are beaten first (Rodney King). The glyph on the left half of the poster signifies division.
Unfortunately, white America continues to fail to address its persistent racism. [MF]
Our trademark and wordmark for Touchstone Climbing’s gym Pacific Pipe in Oakland. The type is based on the building’s existing hand-painted signage. Love those chamfered forms!
See all of our logos for Touchstone Climbing under Design is Play Systems.
Old, spurious examples of our Trump 24K Gold-Plated poster are currently recirculating on social media. These memes have been investigated (and debunked) multiple times by Snopes and AFP Fact Check, among others.
The urgency and gravity of our original message that Donald Trump is a demagogue with a frightening capacity to incite violence is diluted by memes that trivialize hate.
Read our original design intent for the poster on our September 12, 2016 plog.
Mark’s “Tolerance” poster displayed in the lobby of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre in Belgrade.
On November 16th, the International day of Tolerance, the “Tolerance Poster Show” opened at the Pride Info Center in Belgrade, Serbia. Simultaneously, the “Tolerance Poster Show” was shown in the lobby of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre in Belgrade.
See our “Tolerance” posters and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
We invite you to visit Paper Sirens, our new poster shop!
We will be adding more posters, new and old, over the coming weeks and months. Many of our posters are included in archives and museum collections around the world—which we believe is an indication of both their quality and cultural significance.
Our 2016 poster Trump 24K Gold-Plated poster is featured in Mirko Ilić’s “Design of Dissent” poster exhibition, now on display at Casa del Lago in Mexico City. The show was organized by Centro University and Casa del Lago.
See our Trump 24K Gold-Plated poster and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
Mirko Ilićs international “Tolerance Poster Show” opened at the historical Lazareti complex in Dubrovnik, Croatia on August 14. The two posters we designed for the show will be on display until October 1.
Mark’s poster is shown projected on the exterior wall of the Emin’s House, the historical residence of the Ottoman Empire’s Customs Officer. Angie’s poster—a collaboration with calligrapher John Stevens—is displayed in another building on the Lazareti’s premises.
See our “Tolerance” posters and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
Angie’s poster—a collaboration with calligrapher John Stevens—interprets a quote of Martin Luther King Jr.’s included in his 1963 book of sermons, “Strength to Love.”
Mark’s poster superimposes one of his illustrations over a halftone image of Donald Trump and the White House.
Zayed University published a 226 page catalog of the “The Tolerance Poster Show” that opened last month in Dubai. While a number of posters were censored from the exhibition (see May 13th post), all 111 posters were reproduced in the book.
Thank you to organizers David Howarth and Kevin Badni for their efforts, and to Mirko Ilić for inviting us to participate in this amazing project in 2018!