Free Agents

Free Agents

2022
Exhibition branding
internship — SDSU Art Galleries
print, wayfinding, identity

Free Agents: In Residence with Furniture and Woodworking 2010 – 2022, on view from April 14 – May 13, 2022, was a faculty-curated exhibition featuring the works of twenty-three craftspeople who had taken up successive semester-long residencies at the SDSU School of Art + Design. I collaborated with the curators and the exhibition coordinator to craft an exhibition identity that could span across a variety of media and embody the artists’ workmanship.

Image below courtesy of © Ken Jacques

process

The challenge began with discerning a logo for the introductory facade. I spent a day in the woodshop on campus sifting through the resource library, taking pictures of fascinating type, and compiling a list of woodworking tools and machinery. All of the iterations below were inspired by my initial research.

Brand exploration

The introductory facade design (left) combines aspects of the initial logos to which the curators responded most enthusiastically. The geometric linework—inspired by artisan blueprints and drafts—and abstracted screw icons recall the crafts of woodworking and furniture design. I use Helvetica for the primary logotype—sleek and modern, contrasted with an industrial monotype.

With the main branding decided, I explore myriad signage designs (below) that will serve as the wayfinding elements on the walls of the gallery. The top row is inspired mainly by furniture design—note the Bertoia Diamond™ Chair silhouette—while the following rows are inspired by woodworking joinery techniques.

Brand Application

I continue to flesh out the brand with print ephemera, marketing materials, and didactic panels. Here, I adopt a primarily bright green and neutral gray color palette.

systems

As noted previously, an industrial-like monotype, Antarctican Mono, is the primary typeface of the brand, with the exception of the Helvetica logotype. Additionally, we opted to use a variety of screwhead graphics as decorative icons across the didactic panels. The advantage of using these graphics with subtlety is that they appear to be abstract shapes at first glance, but with a little knowledge of the craft, you are able to identify them and discern their relationship to the exhibition. How many do you recognize?

final application

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© 2022 by Brennan Hickey

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