All of Us or None:
Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area

March 31–August 19, 2012

ALL OF US OR NONE celebrated the acquisition of one of the largest collection of social justice posters and protest ephemera ever cataloged, from the 1960s through the late 1980s. The centerpiece of this 3,700-square-foot exhibit space was a real-world screen printing studio. Dirk Dieter provided consultation and fabrication drawings for this structure.

I served as creative lead and exhibit designer on the project, providing wall elevations, concept and branding, exhibit graphics, advertising, marketing collateral, and retail product.

Creative Direction  |  Identity + Mark  |  Illustration  |  Exhibit Design  |  Elevations  |  Graphic Design

IN GALLERY

The entry mural digital collage was assembled from high resolution scans from the museum's poster archive, and was meant to express the organic and chaotic way in which these posters once existed "in the wild."

This treatment continued into the gallery lobby, as a continuous brick walled urban canvas, overrun with posters.

The identity system incorporated period-appropriate screen printed typography, both in-gallery and on apparel.

A key element throughout the identity and exhibit design was this hand-drawn skyline of the Bay Area, stretching from Oakland on the left across, Treasure Island to San Francisco on the right. I assembled a digital panorama of over a dozen photos and then used it as the basis for a large format illustration in Sharpie, which I then scanned in pieces and re-assembled digitally.

Curatorial panels incorporated the skyline as the primary element. All text panels in the gallery were hung within beams and frames, suggesting posters being hung out to dry.

The center of the gallery was an "open box" screen printing studio. Instruction panels and a glossary of terms flanked the entry points, hung the same way as the curatorial panels. 

At several points in the gallery, a strip of wall texture and poster montage mirrored the entry treatment. These posters were reproduced on paper and hand pasted, as opposed to digitally collaged. All works were composed on the gallery walls in an organic fashion, rather than a traditional hang-line presentation.

CAMPAIGN & COLLATERAL

Standard ad deck across all print outlets featured the skyline element.

Poster reproduction series. Each month during the show run, a poster from the exhibit was reproduced in a full-page advertisement in the East Bay Express.

The collectible ad was designed with the deck running vertical, allowing the poster to easily be cut out for posting or framing.