Archivo Rastro is an exhibition project based around a photographic archive that was generated by digitalizing and cataloguing more than 3,000 negatives and slides found in Madrid’s flea market “El Rastro”.

The Archivo Rastro team requested that the identity should be used both for the archive and for the graphic image of the exhibition, in addition the images of the archive should be present, but without confusing the receiver about the exhibition purpose.

The identity is based on the concepts of latency and ordered disorder, to communicate ideas such as collection, diversity or explore and discover. Plain and Atlas Typewriter were used looking for a contemporary sensation disconnected from nostalgia.

See more images on Fase Studio’s website.

Bulletin Typewriter, originally a monospaced hot metal typeface, set proportionally (and extra tight) in this ad from 1980, advertising Kent’s Golden Lights, from the Sports Illustrated archive. Equally massive and impressive, the archives offer scans of complete issues from the 1950s up to the 2010s. In the magazine, stories are interspersed with advertisements that aspired to look more healthy than they are: mainly cigarettes, alcohol, and cars.

The Nature of Photographs (Phaidon) is a primer on fine photography by famous photographer Stephen Shore, modelled after his many years of teaching the subject. The layout uses A2 Typewriter in small bursts, referencing an aesthetic of pre-digital photojournalism. The light gray color makes sure that the type never takes attention away from the wonderful photographs.

[Editor’s note: The font in use here is an early, pre-release version of A2 Typewriter – MS]

Front cover of Supercomputer by Edward Packard (No. 39, 1984). In total, 184 different Adventures were published over the years.

Wikipedia:

Choose Your Own Adventure, as published by Bantam Books, was one of the most popular children’s series during the 1980s and 1990s, selling more than 250 million copies between 1979 and 1998.

Back cover

Black Suburbia: From Levittown to Ferguson is an exhibition presented by The New York Public Library's Shomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of the leading institutions focusing exclusively on African-American, African Diaspora, and African experiences. The exhibition examines the complex narrative of the African-American suburb from the 20th century to today, looking to communities such as Hempstead, NY, Ferguson, MO, and Shaker Heights, OH, as case studies for a contradictory yet hopeful dream. Pentagram's Eddie Opara and team designed exhibition graphics and print materials for Black Suburbia which address the unique triumphs and challenges of the black suburban struggle.

Developed in collaboration with the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, Black Suburbia, tackles issues such as suburban segregation, institutional discrimination, and residential racism in black communities from the late 1800s to current day. Opara wanted to stress the severity of these issues in the exhibition's logo, which sets type within an upside-down American flag. The application references the United States Flag Code, which states that the flag "should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property." The red stripes of the flag are echoed throughout the titling of the exhibition.