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.
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 recently completed the design of the memoir Adventures in China: What I Learned While Building a New Bank in Shanghai. The book’s themes include the influence of the Chinese Communist Party over every aspect of commerce; a lack of transparency in how decisions are made; and the sense of inscrutability experienced by foreigners doing business in China—in this case an American banker.
The design evokes these themes via a gloss black on matte black title treatment; mirrored letterforms; and a spine delineated by a glimpse of the front page of the People’s Daily from 1949, the day the People’s Republic of China was established.
We set the book title in Garage Gothic, a display typeface by Tobias Frere-Jones. The subtitle and author’s name are set in E13B, a Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) font used in the printing of checks and banking documents. The book was printed and bound by Oscar Printing, San Francisco.
See other book covers we’ve designed under Design is Play Covers.
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 interview with Allan Haley for his Type Trends column, “fy{t}i,” published via MyFonts.com. No, we are not “trendy” designers! But hopefully what we say about how we use type will be helpful to some.
Download a PDF of the interview under Design is Play Press.
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!
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.
We are honored to have worked with our friends at the Letterform Archive and Joel Benson at Dependable Letterpress to design the Archive’s new “Charter Member Keepsake”!
Read about the design and print processes at Letterform Archive news.
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!
Angie’s poster can be seen on the far left on the top row. Mark’s poster is censored and is among the bundle of canvases in the center of the gallery floor.
On May 13th “The Tolerance Poster Show” opened at Zayed University’s Urban Satellite Space in Dubai. The posters were printed on stretched canvases and will be exhibited across all seven Emirates in the following months.
A number of posters were censored by the upper administration of the University due to their “sensitive nature.” Mirko Ilić, the curator of “Tolerance,” writes: “The organizer decided, rather than leave them [censored work] out of the show altogether, they were included as a ‘sculpture’ in the middle of the room so that there was an opportunity for discussion with the visitors.”
Mark’s poster is among the censored works.
See both “Tolerance” posters and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
The Oaks Theatre on Solano Avenue in Berkeley, California.
Our recently completed trademark and wordmark for Touchstone Climbing’s newest gym, The Oaks on Solano Avenue! The type is based on the theater’s original neon signage.
See all of our logos for Touchstone Climbing under Design is Play Systems.
Our “Tolerance” posters are exhibited outside the Mestni Muzej (City Museum) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The posters are being exhibited as part of the 5th “Festival House of Tolerance”—an international festival of films, lectures, exhibits, and other cultural events.
Mark’s poster superimposes one of his illustrations over a halftone image of Donald Trump and the White House.
Angie worked with noted calligrapher John Stevens to typographically interpret a quote of Martin Luther King Jr.’s included in his 1963 book of sermons, “Strength to Love.”
See both “Tolerance” posters and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
Photography: foto.mihas.fras
Last May, our CCA colleague Neal Schwartz invited us to collaborate with his office to develop an identity for El Pípila—a women-owned, family-run restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Guanajuato, Mexico.
Working with Schwartz and Architecture, we provided full pro bono design services to brand El Pípila. Our work includes brand positioning and design of the trademark, wordmark, environmental graphics, and interior and exterior signage.
El Pípila opened its doors today! Special thanks to Schwartz and Architecture and La Cocina.
See the full spectrum of our work for El Pípila under Design is Play Studio Systems.
Photography: Bruce Damonte
Our GW monogram for Great Western Power Co. is included in Communication Arts’ 9th Typography Annual!
Great Western Power Co. is a rock climbing gym built inside a former power sub-station and steam heat plant in Oakland, California. We described it to our friends at Touchstone Climbing as “a little DC Comics: powerful and super-charged.” We hand-inked the symbol before building it in Illustrator.
Our GW monogram is one of 128 projects out of 1,653 entries that will appear in the January/February issue of Communication Arts.
We are delighted to be profiled in today’s blog post at the Letterform Archive. Florence Fu surveys our body of agitprop over the last 25 year—with an eye on our differences: So. Cal vs. Taipei; English vs. Mandarin; Bob Dylan vs. Janet Jackson.
Read the interview online at Letterform Archive News.
Unirii Square in Timișoara, Romania
We are honored that our 2016 poster Trump 24K Gold-Plated is featured in Mirko Ilić’s Design of Dissent poster exhibition, which opened in Timișoara, Romania on October 19th.
From the exhibition statement: “The Design of Dissent is a survey of prominent graphic works of social and political protest and critique spanning the last fifty years, initiated by Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilić. The exhibition in Timișoara includes a selection of graphic works created by Atelier Nous Travaillons Ensemble (France), Péter Pócs (Hungary), Yossi Lemel (Israel), Cedomir Kostović (USA), Barbara Kruger (USA), Parisa Tashakori (Iran), Jose Luis Lopez (Ecuador), Coco Cerrella (Argentina), Vitaliy Shostya, Elena Batenko, Svetlana Koshkina, Marina Chikaliuk (Ukraine), Anur Hadžiomerspahić (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Chun-liang Leo Lin (Taiwan), Andrew Lewis (Canada), Natalia Delgado Avila (Mexico), Mohammad Sharaf (Kuwait), Chris Serrano (USA), Ramzi Moutran, Sabia Fatayri, Christopher Hunt (USA), Yue Chen (USA), Mark Fox, Angie Wang (USA), Juan F. Miranda (Argentina), Bruno Rivera (Bolivia), Dalida Karić-Hadžiahmetović (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Wesam Mazhar Haddad (Jordan), Dugudus (France), Bukheyproject/Bulkin S., Mikheeva E. (Russia).”
See our Trump 24K Gold-Plated poster and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.
Photos: © 2018 Paula Duta.