Spotted: Pedestrian safety poster

jayshells street crossing poster

The most recent poster (above) installed outside Woolsey Hall—a plea for pedestrian safety by New York artist Jason "Jay Shells" Shelowitz—stands in contrast to the usual pieces of arts publicity in neighboring display cases. The poster appears to be the latest addition to an ongoing effort by the Yale Traffic Safety Subcommittee to encourgage safer pedestrain behavior on campus. Smaller versions of this poster mark many of the street corners on campus, while spray-painted signs reading, "Don't read this, look up" mark others. Jason Shelowitz has received attention for his unofficial MTA subway notices encouraging New Yorkers to show greater courtesy while riding the subway. If you have not passed by the display cases lately, I would recommend stopping by! The bold typography and use of striking orange both catches the eye and delivers ever-useful advice.      

Our New Rollins Fellow

"In the summer of 1980, between my first and second years of Art School, I worked part time for the Yale University Printing Service, housed then at 149 York Street, the current site of the DMCA. 

Akefeh Nurosi, MFA '80, was working there that summer as the full-time summer Rollins Fellow. She was the latest of approximately 30 MFA students who had, two or three at a time, worked with Greer Allen, the University Printer, to produce the day-to-day design work of the University since 1970. This was a win-win initiative: Yale University's administrative publications benefitted from the talents of graduate art students, and those students benefitted from working for Greer and from serving Yale clients with high expectations of the work of the Printing Service.

The Yale University Printing Service merged with Yale RIS in 1998, and the Fellowship slid into dormancy.

In 2002 I began to employ recent Yale graduates to serve as designers in the revamped Office of the University Printer for one or two years following graduation. Among these were Christopher Sleboda, MFA '03, who now serves as design director at Yale University Art Gallery; Yve Ludwig '00, MFA '05, until recently an Art Director at Pentagram; and Iris Shih '07. While these colleagues were not hired as Rollins Fellows, they filled that role—and more—in the Office of the University Printer. Chika Ota '11 was hired following her graduation as the first Rollins Fellow so named in many years.

The Rollins Fellowship, thus restored, provides an opportunity for recent MFA or BA graduates to engage in the work of their alma mater. They bring their own style and up-to-date sensibilities to our office's wide range of institutionally significant projects." —John Gambell, MFA '81, University Printer and Senior Critic in Graphic Design

Our office is pleased to announce the appointment of our next Carl Purington Rollins Fellow in Design Communications: Rachel Needle '13. Rachel was an art major in the graphic design concentration. As a freshman, she joined the Production & Design staff of the Yale Daily News, where she designed the popular Cross Campus blog and Weekend web pages. She has completed internships with The American Academy in Rome, Paper Magazine, and Potion Design

Rachel's Apex type specimen.

Frank Sinatra has a Cold

We noticed Rachel's aptitude for design when we saw her small book submission to the 2012 Lohmann Prizes for excellence in printing and design. That book, which used clever construction and transparency to great effect, was awarded an honorable mention. Throughout the Rollins Fellow application process, we were impressed by her thoughtful and iterative approach to design, her attention to typographic detail, and the combination of rigor and creativity visible in her work. 

Neon poster detail.

Yale Daily News WEEKEND cover.

Welcome to our office, Rachel! We're glad to have you with us.

See more of Rachel's work on her website and stay tuned for future posts about Carl Purington Rollins, the man for whom the fellowship is named.

All images courtesy of Rachel Needle.

Spotted: Designs for Windham Campbell Prizes

Windham Campbell vitrine.

Have you noticed a proliferation of orange, white, and black brackets around campus? They're part of the Pentagram-designed identity system for the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes. These prestigious prizes provide unrestricted grants to support writers of fiction, non-fiction, and drama. The first-ever winners were announced in March; the prize ceremony and celebratory festival will take place from September 10–13, 2013.

WC booklet spread.

Because this program is permanent, it does not have a logo (anniversaries and one-time events like Beinecke's 50th anniversary or Yale's Tercentennial celebration are permitted to have identifying marks). Instead, the Prizes have a recognizable visual identity created through color and a vocabulary of brackets—but no logo per se. The Prizes' association to Yale is referenced through the use of the Yale typeface.

WC booklet spread.

The brackets bring to mind the history of print and printing throughout the ages—the jumble of styles and sizes evoke the visual delight of a font drawer as well as the symbol-strewn markup of modern hypertext. In that sense, the identity is neither dated nor trendy: it is a mark of continuity throughout the still-changing world of written media.

WC booklet type detail.

WC booklet back cover.

Learn more about the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at windhamcampbell.org.

 

Beyond Design

The Office of the University Printer is most closely associated with graphic design, but there’s another aspect of our work for the University: we provide editorial services as well. Our most important editorial project is the Bulletin of Yale University, the annual series of seventeen publications detailing the policies and programs of Yale College, the Graduate School, the professional schools, the Institute of Sacred Music, and the MacMillan Center. Work on the series begins each January and continues through the summer, as new information is solicited, queries addressed, and inconsistencies resolved. Editors review spelling and grammar, of course, but a surprisingly significant amount of time is spent fact-checking. Are book titles and publication dates accurately cited in a faculty profile? Is an organization’s name correctly configured? Are the many lists in the Yale College viewbooks for prospective freshmen up-to-date? 

After two rounds of updating and editorial review in Word, we shift to InDesign. Here’s a stack of galleys from the Graduate School bulletin; the reusable flags alert the typesetter to pages with changes, and the proofreader to pages that need to be checked.

Flags.

All but three of the Bulletins are digitally printed at Yale Printing & Publishing Services. Here’s a sampling of the 2013–2014 issues. And all are posted on the Bulletin of Yale website in pdf and html.

Bulletins of Yale University.

Our office also takes on other editorial work, almost always in connection with design projects that we are handling. Just this year, we have edited everything from the annual Veterans Day program, to an exhibition brochure published by the Lewis Walpole Library, to the Yale-NUS College Curriculum Report, to the book celebrating Richard Levin’s twenty-year presidency. And we try to cast an editorial eye on the text for every design project that comes into the office. Even the best design can’t untangle a tortuous sentence or make sense of conflicting information.

OUP editorial work.

Yale's front page

New frontpage.

Have you looked at Yale's web front page recently? You might have noticed that it received a subtle facelift.

Compare it to the old front page, pictured below:

Old frontpage.

The new front page retains the old site's structure and content but features a cleaner, lighter look. An extra column has been added to the grid system (or more accurately, the fifth and rightmost column -- empty on the old page -- is now utilized for additional photographic and textual real estate), larger type enhances legiblity, social media icons are given prominent placement, new photography throughout lends a more contemporary feel to the site.

Below are the new and old pages on academic programs:

New Academic page.

Old Academic page.

The topbar (containing "Yale University," links to the calendar and a-z index, and the search bar) has been integrated more fully into the new site's header. The elimination of the yellow backgrounds helps pull the site together, too -- the universally white background unifies the visual field.

New Visitors page.

Old Visitors page.

The blue bar headings ("Visitors" on the new page shown above) showcase Drupal 7's web font integration capabilities. The Yale typeface is fully supported throughout the site with automatic replacement of ligatures, automatic typographer's quotes and apostrophes, and widow control.

See the new front page at www.yale.edu. And check back soon for a comprehensive look at the history of Yale's web presence since its 1994 inception.

 

Spotted: Summer Carillon Concert Series Posters

Woolsey Hall vitrine carillon poster.

There's a great new poster outside of Woolsey Hall. It advertises Yale's Summer Carillon Concert Series, which features current and alumni guild members as well as carillonneurs from all over the world.

The poster's visual language evokes Yale's own graphic identity: its design is simple in its adherence to a single alignment scheme and uses a minimal amount of variation in text styles to differentiate types of information, and the shades of blue, though not "official Yale," feel appropriately bright for the seasonal context and content of the poster.

A mysterious geometric mark is the sole clue to the poster's designer. (Know who designed the piece? Leave a comment on this post!)

Carillon poster logo.

I've also spotted a companion letter-sized poster, presumably by the same designer, hanging around campus. It features similar condensed, tightly leaded text and geometric depictions of Harkness Hall (home to Yale's 54-bell Memorial Carillon).

Letter-size carillon poster.

Carillon poster type detail.

It's great to see these carefully designed posters around campus. The Woolsey Hall vitrine poster is particularly successful and will no doubt pique the interest of passersby.

Learn more about the Yale Guild of Carillonneurs and the summer concert series on their website.

 

Spotted: Institute of Sacred Music poster

ISM poster.

This is a poster for an Institute of Sacred Music concert. The design is understated but thoughtful: it showcases careful typography (old style figures, letterspaced small caps, minimal variation in type styles and sizes, attentive spacing around bullets, etc), an elegant color palette, and compositional consideration. 

Though the poster doesn't adhere to Yale's visual identity guidelines to the letter, it does a good job of imparting many of the sensibilities that "Yale design" tends toward. The display text ("we sing the story") shares characteristics with the Yale typeface; the sans serif, TheSans, is a "recommended pairing" for the Yale font. The hierarchy of information is well-ordered, and the use of an image paired with large type draws in viewers from a distance. 

There's an interesting optical illusion at the top of the poster: within the group of three small cap lines ("A community hymn..."), the middle line looks like it's closer to the top line instead of evenly spaced between the top and bottom. The yellow text seems to move down while the black text appears to move up. Optical adjustment would help counteract this illusion. The punctuation of the last line ("Free; and free parking. www.yale.edu/ism") is correct but unusual: it unnecessarily draws attention to that otherwise minimal visual event.

This poster is an effective and tasteful advertisement.

Celebrating Richard C. Levin's Yale Presidency

A selection of celebratory RCL print materials.

Our office designed a number of items in honor of Richard C. Levin's twenty-year Yale presidency. The most significant of these was 'Shining Furrows': A Celebration of the Presidency of Richard C. Levin, a picture book with timeline that documents many of Levin's achievements as president. 'Shining Furrows' was a major project comprising significant editorial, design, and coordinative work by our office. The content-gathering team included contributors from many departments across the University, and we enlisted designers Julie Fry '92, MFA '00, and Jessica Svendsen '09, MFA '13, to help drive the design side of the project. 

Spreads from 'Shining Furrows.'

'Shining Furrows' graph detail.

'Shining Furrows' foil-stamped cover detail.

'Shining Furrows' was presented to President Levin at a celebratory dinner held in Sterling Memorial Library on April 5. For that event, we also designed numerous print materials in collaboration with Angie Hurlbut MFA '97, including a Cole Porter-themed, Levin-customized songbook; a hand-bound booklet of Jane Levin's February 2013 lecture to Berkeley College seniors, titled Love Song for Yale; and the invitation/confirmation card, complete with envelope and "blueprint" vellum cover.

Cole Porter-themed songbook cover.

Dinner invitation and cover.

 

Jane Levin's Love Song for Yale.

Love Song for Yale detail.

As the venue for the dinner, Sterling Library provided us with an excellent opportunity to try out our three-dimensional design skills. The colors, content, and typography of the installations in the nave and transepts were derived from the design of 'Shining Furrows.' We created an installation in the card catalog, a corridor display highlighting major improvements to the University that were effected by Levin, and a faux leaded-glass tribute to President Levin intended to blend seamlessly into an existing interior window. We also consulted with the Office of the Vice President on everything from table settings that featured 3d-printed centerpieces highlighting some of the new buildings completed under Levin to flower arrangements to lighting configurations.

Card catalog "Y".

Corridor display.

Corridor display detail.

Faux leaded-glass letters.

3d-printed centerpiece.

Blueprint napkin.

Blueprint napkin detail.

Above: RCL's "blueprint for Yale" napkin with logo designed by Angie Hurlbut MFA '97 of AHdesign.

Finally, we designed The Worth of the University in collaboration with Rebecca Gibb '83, MFA '92. Published by Yale University Press, the book is a collection of speeches and essays from Levin's second decade as president. It is a companion volume to The Work of the University, whose publication in 2003 (also by Yale University Press) celebrated the first decade of his presidency. For this project, our office designed the jacket, featuring an image by University Photographer Michael Marsland, and interior text pages.

The Worth of the University cover.

The Worth of the University type detail.

Above: Detail of typographic page designed by Rebecca Gibb '83, MFA '92.

We thank all of our vendors and the staff and students who provided skilled and timely support to these design efforts. Congratulations on twenty years of inspired leadership at Yale, Mr. Levin, and best wishes for the future!

Blueprint detail.

Photographs of faux leaded-glass, Malone Center centerpiece, and Mr. Bass with blueprint napkin courtesy of Michael Marsland.

New work: "In the Midst of the Jovial Crowd" exhibition at the Lewis Walpole Library

Boswell poster detail.

Boswell exhibition poster.

Rebecca designed print and exhibition graphics for the exhibition currently on view at the Lewis Walpole Library. The exhibition "In the Midst of the Jovial Crowd" focuses on eighteenth-century biographer James Boswell's travels in London from 1762 to 1763. His exploration of the city's lively culture is well-documented in his London Journal.

Boswell exhibition wall graphics.

Above: Vinyl letter wall graphics installed in the exhibition space.

Boswell exhibition wall labels.

The show features prints by contemporaneous artists such as William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson as well as books and manuscripts that comprised the cultural millieu of Boswell's beloved London.

In addition to designing a poster, item labels, and vinyl wall graphics for the show, Rebecca designed a 24-page booklet for the show. The GIF below shows a few spreads from it.

Boswell exhibition booklet.

The show will be on view on Wednesdays from 2 to 4.30 pm and by appointment until early October 2013 at the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut.

Exhibition photographs courtesy of Rebecca Martz.

New work: Emergency Management Guide

Old & new EM guides.

When the Office of Emergency Management needed a new brochure in 2011, our office was called upon to redesign what was originally presented to us as a Word document. My first redesign resulted in the guide shown below. Bright orange-red and blue became a "color identity" for Emergency Management, appearing as signature colors on their website and on promotional posters and cards.

Original EM guide cover.

 type detail.

This year, Emergency Management's need to update text and reprint the guide offered an opportunity to revisit the design as well. I employed the signature colors more dramatically to create a sense of urgency appropriate to the subject matter, as well as to denote logical section breaks and more effectively highlight important information. The new guide is not only more visible, it's more portable—just 6 x 9 inches instead of 6.75 x 11—hopefully increasing the likelihood that it will be seen and used in a real emergency.

New EM guide spreads. type detail.

 type detail.

Thank you to Maria Bouffard, Director of Emergency Management, for involving our office in this project!