EXCHANGE
A visual identity built from cardboard tubes
MY ROLE
Art Director
Visual Identity, Logo, Exhibition Graphics, Wayfinding
SCALE
3.500 SF / ground-level exhibit space
CLIENT
2x8 Exhibit Build Team &
AIA Los Angeles
STATUS
Built
YEAR
2019
DESIGN-BUILD TEAM
J. Sharp, D. Corr, M. Keckeisen, M. Young, C. Locke, J. Howe, N. Sharp
LOCATION
Helms Design Center
Los Angeles, California
PRESS
2x8 is a student design competition, exhibit and scholarship run by the LA chapter of the AIA. For the 2019 theme, Exchange, a team of architects assembled the temporary gallery from cardboard tubes. Designed around flexibility, movability and reuse, the gallery held a showcase of student work and interactive community workshops on creative reuse before being disassembled and recycled.
I was engaged by the design-build team to develop the graphic identity, logo and exhibition graphics. After many rounds of iteration, the logo grew from the exhibit’s own forms: an “X” built from axonometric cylinders representing the gallery walls, sized by the letters in “Exchange”, with a corrugated circular border that echoed the tubes themselves. Beyond the requested poster graphics, I added take-home stickers and floor decals that carried the identity through the gallery and out into the neighborhood.
LOGO
Drawn from the cardboard tube’s circular profile and the exhibit’s plan shapes, the “X” logo is built from axonometric cylinders like the gallery walls themselves. The mark and name fit together, and the “X” is sized to fit the letters in the year’s theme “Exchange”. The border references the familiar cross-section of corrugated cardboard and the temporary/recycled nature of the exhibition.
DECALS & STICKERS
The brief from the design-build team originally asked for posters. Because the concept centered on collaboration and temporality, I added take-home stickers for the workshop zones and floor decals for wayfinding, inside the gallery and outdoors, to draw neighbors in. All were temporary, and we kept finding the stickers around the area long after the event.
