“Getting Upper”

Amos Klausner charged twenty-six designers with re-imagining one letter from the alphabet, using the illegibility and deconstructive nature of graffiti as their starting point. (We chose the letter “A”.) The ensuing exhibition, “Getting Upper,” opened at the Pasadena Museum of California Art on May 15, 2011.

Our lowercase letter “a” is derived from Albrecht Dürer’s schema for blackletter construction published in 1538. Dürer’s line drawing breaks down the letter into component parts to reveal its design. We subvert this intent by reversing the diagram, flipping the negative spaces to positive ones. The resulting segments are then printed in a palette of modulated colors that further fragment (and deconstruct) the constructed letter. Our poster layout utilizes Jan Tschichold’s non-arbitrary page proportioning system to suggest a book page with the image area as the text block.

COLLECTIONS

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
• Letterform Archive, San Francisco

EXHIBITIONS

• “Getting Upper” (2011)
Pasadena Museum of California Art

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EDITION: Open (unsigned)

DIMENSIONS: 18 x 24 inches
MEDIA: Screen printed in six inks on Mohawk Loop Smooth Pure White Cover.

PRINTING: Bloom Screen Printing Company / Oakland
DESIGN: © 2011 Mark Fox and Angie Wang, Design is Play / SF