Columbia GSAPP Fall ’23 / Spring ’24 Public Programming Identity

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In the summer of 2023 I was invited by Columbia GSAPP to design the school’s annual public programming identity. The school had recently decided to expand the scope of the graphic designer’s role at the school: rather than creating a single poster, the designer would produce assets for a variety of special lecture series, public events and everyday communications.

The year’s identity was conceived as a sci-fi fable about an artificially intelligent lichen, named A, digesting the rubble of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The identity is unified by a bespoke, open-source typeface, Petri, which is inspired by the ambiguous internal relationships of the organisms composing lichen. Nobody is quite sure whether the algae and fungi that make up lichen are friends, lovers or foes, nor are they sure what newly discovered yeast inside of them does, beyond adding some color. What is certain is that lichen are brittle when dry and soft and floppy when wet, so Petri has 2 styles: Algae, consisting of filled contours, and Fungus, a monolinear style. Each of the 2 styles has 3 cuts: dry, moist and wet. The fonts were engineered so that both styles could be overlayed and subsequently wrapped around one another, mimicking the structure of lichens. The other typeface visible in the work is New Edge 666 by Charlotte Rhode.

Collaborators include director of exhibitions / curator: Bart-jan Polman, dean: Andrés Jaque, assistant directors of communications: Shannon Werle, Ilana Curtis, director of internal exhibitions and events: Kendra Sykes, assistant dean of admissions and outreach: Steffen Boddeker, everyone contributed creative feedback.

a strange stick figure made of chrome pipes and glowing orange and yellow orbs steps onto a gray field of color from a window showing a blurred landscape
a schedule displayed alongside other y2k-ish graphics
strange colors and musty forms above the word affirmations
strange colors and musty forms
a strange stick figure made of chrome pipes and glowing orange and yellow orbs flies horizontally across the frame chased by a snake
printed musty affirmations posters mounted in a stairwell next to an elevator
printed spring posters mounted in a hallway next to a water fountain
a person presenting a book in front of light boxed posters
a person speaking next to a ligh boxed poster
handmade cushions on a stairwell covered in printed fabric
a handmade cushion on a stairwell covered in printed fabric
a handmade cushion on a stairwell covered in printed fabric
a handmade cushion on a stairwell covered in printed fabric
a handmade cushion on a stairwell covered in printed fabric
a handmade cushion on a stairwell covered in printed fabric

A sub-identity for GSAPP’s Libray is Open book launch series. Custom cushions designed and produced in collaboration with Sophie Engert.

a poster featuring an image of a woman surrounded by a vector graphic of the snake fighting the yeast
an instagram post promoting a lecture by Hamza Walker
a rudimentary drawing of a snake with the body replaced by text reading

Examples of social and event collateral. As events progressed I got bored and began jumbling the motifs I had designed. The snake often decomposed and its facial features became diagrams of themselves, or written labels replaced its features completely. It often battled with the other characters.

an instagram post with people arguing about the design quality in the comments
an instagram post with people arguing about the design quality in the comments

The identity generated a lot of buzz online and off, with meme accounts complaining about the graphics and students making false flyers promoting people like Taylor Swift as guest lecturers.