GOVERNANCE

Take the Bill of Rights from the U.S. Constitution and typeset it in a uniquely compelling way.

GOVERNANCE is a conceptual art piece that consists of a restaurant menu, a guest check holder, and a guest check.

Identity + Mark  |  Editorial Design + Layout  |  Copy Writing + Editing 

It was an interesting challenge, how to present the Bill of Rights. I decided to take the "bill" quite literally, and invent a luxurious dining establishment called "Governance." I custom fabricated the matching menu and guest check holder. The receipt is realistic in not only typesetting and scale, but also substrate; I took the long inkjet print to a small office supply shop that had an early model fax machine, and output a copy of of it on the same kind of thermal paper that POS printers use.

I drew the flourishes at the top and bottom of the pages (as well as under the "Governance" logo) to match the alternate swash style of Bickham Script.

The most fun part of this project was the actual writing; I described each of these six forms of government as dishes. One might wince at some of the puns, but I like them.

Here the entire guest check design is displayed in two columns; the actual POS receipt print was over three feet long. True to form, I rasterized and down-sampled the "Governance" logo for inclusion at the top of the check. The 'total' for The Bill is the cost of U.S. military might around the world, admittedly a bit heavy handed in terms of political satire.

Because of its wealth of alternate swashes and overall sophistication, I went with Richard Lipton’s Bickham Script for the kind of 18th century writing style you often see at expensive eateries. Robert Slimbach's venerable digital recut of Garamond for Adobe was more than up to the challenge of a supporting role. And naturally, the only way I could approximate a really authentic, contemporary, computerized POS receipt was to employ OCR-B.

I chose simple browns and burgundies for that classy restaurant look.