Isaac Julien: I Dream a World is the first US retrospective for the British artist known for his immersive, multichannel video installations.

Julien's films revisit the past to create spaces of cultural memory that invite us to reframe our priorities in the present. In response, we wanted to source typography that was historically-grounded. As a newly acquired FAMSF artwork and one of the centerpieces of the de Young presentation, Lessons of the Hour (2019) served as the catalyst for typographic research. “Lessons of the Hour” is a poetic meditation on the life and work of writer, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. We chose EK Roumald as a typeface that recalls the Scotch Roman typographic tradition of Douglass’s time. Roumald’s contemporary features – most notably its curvature and the softness added to the counterforms to create an almost blurry feel – also served as an appropriate nod to the dreamlike quality of the artist’s work. In constructing the title lockup, we explored treatments that were fragmented, generating a sense of movement or choreography across the page. This was intended to reference the kind of visual rhythm the artworks possess in the multichannel installation format.

The presence of mylar in Once Again... Statues Never Die (2022) led us to incorporate reflective materials into the title wall graphics using chrome vinyl. The gallery didactics were primarily housed in a central atrium, where individual films or pairs of videos branched off in a “choose your own adventure” style. The FAMSF design studio commissioned the fabrication of photographic facsimiles to accompany each didactic text and embedded these aluminum mounted prints into the surrounding text. The composition of text and image employ the same visual rhythm and movement that inspired the title lock-up.

With works that exuded cool elegance and transgressive sensuality, Tamara de Lempicka (1894–1980) helped define Art Deco. Her paintings captured the glamour and vitality of postwar Paris and the cosmopolitan sheen of Hollywood celebrity. This exhibition at the de Young is the first major museum retrospective of Lempicka in the United States.

Lempicka’s work is characterized by bold lines, geometric, and angular shapes. Her figures possess a volumetric presence and monumental scale within the frame, often situated against the backdrop of a looming cityscape.

To create a backdrop for the graphic identity, we borrowed visual cues from the kind of narrow hypervertical linearity found in Art Deco architecture, vertical slat blinds, and corrugated glass. Vertical panels functioned as a backdrop and recurring visual motif within the marketing campaign and the exhibition space.

Because the vertical panel gradient referenced the Art Deco period, we wanted to contrast that by using a contemporary sans serif that brings this exhibition into the present day. For the title lock-up, JL Pirelli lent itself well to a tight stacked orientation which gives it a clean and concise expression.

de Young onsite signage

Irving Penn is widely recognized as one of the 20th century’s greatest photographers. Vogue’s longest-standing contributor, Penn revolutionized fashion photography in the postwar era. The retrospective at the de Young Museum San Francisco traces his 70-year spanning career in 175 photographs—from early documentary scenes chronicling the Summer of Love to celebrity portraits, abstract nudes, and fashion studies.

The graphic identity and typographic concept were developed by Lizzie Baur and uses a custom unreleased variable version of Charlottenburg, which was created for the exhibition. A major through-line centers on theatricality and artifice. For the existential portrait series, Penn made a banal, temporary set in which he stuffed his subjects into a corner crevice, challenging them to grapple with physically occupying such an unusual space. Their bodies became almost sculptural as his sitters contort and utilize the space in radically different ways. To rearticulate the gesture typographically, Lizzie Baur imagined their bodies as letterforms. The width of the characters can be manually scaled, just like the portrayed adapt to their unfamiliar surroundings.

The variable font is also employed in motion graphics, which nicely contrasts with the all-analog title wall leading to the exhibition. The wall was painted by hand by the San Francisco-based sign painting studio New Bohemia Signs and took over three days to complete.

ITC Garamond supports the expressive typography and large-scale display arrangements in the more toned-down, classical communication elements.

More images and additional information can be found on Lizzie Baur’s website.

Inspiration for exhibition titling

Wheat paste posters

Billboard

Charlottenburg variable font animations

Exhibition signage

Exhibition signage

Title wall

New Bohemia’s sign painters at work on the title wall

Time lapse

Exhibition leaflets

Sunset Gothic is used for the identity of Alice Neel: People Come First, the first comprehensive West Coast retrospective of Neel’s work hosted by the de Young museum. The exhibition includes depictions of Neel’s neighbors in Spanish Harlem, political leaders, queer cultural figures, activists, and mothers, along with a diverse representation of nude figures, including visibly pregnant women. Neel's "pictures of people" embody a rare candor and irreverence.

Sunset Gothic is a painterly sans-serif rendered in the tradition of Los Angeles sign-painters. Throughout her life, Neel was very politically active and cared deeply about social justice. Drawing on Neel’s activism and the kind of spontaneous hand-lettering that is produced for protests, Sunset Gothic's expressive and humanistic qualities felt like an appropriate extension of Neel’s artistic approach. The addition of the underline references the signature blue contour outline featured in Neel's paintings.

Design: Lizzie Baur
Art direction: Amy Browne and Ben Shaykin
Exhibition design and graphics: Tristan Telander and Katrina Coulourides

Animation for digital promotion

Rack card (left) and invitation (right)

On site signage

Street pole banner

Poster

In gallery wall text set in Sunset Gothic

Designed by Jerod Rivera under art direction from Amy Browne, Mazagan is the main typeface for all communication for the new Frida Kahlo exhibition at the De Young Museum:

At the time of Frida Kahlo’s death in 1954, a treasure trove of the artist's highly personal items—including jewelry, clothing, and prosthetics—were locked away. 50 years later, these belongings were unsealed—now they’re on view for the first time on the West Coast. Discover what these objects reveal about their now iconic owner in Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving.

All smaller text is set in Akzidenz-Grotesk Next, used by the De Young Museum as their brand typeface.

A new (fictional) identity for the De Young Museum, designed as a project at ArtCenter College Of Design during the fall term of 2016.

The De Young logotype directly relates to the museum’s ability to adapt and thrive to changing times and shifting environments. The collective interaction that happens between the architecture, nature, art, and visitors is at the core of the new museum identity. For example, the contemporary traveling exhibitions are color coded to orange while the museum collection is color coded to green. It communicates the naturally occurring color permutations of the museum's copper skin through oxidation and time from (new) orange to (aged) green within a span of 30 years. Furthermore, the layering, peeling, revealing, and shifting moves are utilised to communicate information through typography, graphic language, and use of images, within any physical or digital spaces. The graphic language reflects the museum’s adaptive transformations throughout its 100+ years of archiving art to share with the community. The connections between the past and present, the interior and exterior, and also the physical and digital spaces drove the conception of the identity to create a dynamic brand voice and a robust ecosystem of applications. See and read more on Behance.

Akzidenz Grotesk AKA Basic Commercial on gold leaf at the de Young.