Identity and book design for MICA’s Multi Media Event 2025. Melodrama is an anthology of narratives, romantic and tragic, capturing the anxieties, expectations, and desires of eight designers at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Melodrama details stories of metamorphosis.

Fashion Designers: (Top) Rhi Ragone, (Bottom) Lailah Eloise-Munford

Photography: (Top) Simon Cai, Elora Millien, (Bottom) Reginald Ransom, Raul Fernando

Fashion designers: Quinn Spence (top), Haley Darling James (bottom)

Photography: Izabela Cookson, Raul Fernando (top Jessie Hunter, Mykel Cox (bottom)

Of Orc-Rags, Phials, & A Far Shore: Voices of Paradise in The Lord of the Rings by Bruce Palmer. T-K Graphics, Kansas City, Missouri, 1976. The title is in Book Jacket by Ursula Suess, used with various alternates, including two forms for n s A C L P R S. The price is added in Eurostile Bold.

These four pamphlets were issued by T-K Graphics between 1974 and 1977. The covers are printed in black on colored paper and feature typefaces that all seem to stem from the catalogs of VGC, ITC and Letraset.

Fanlore has a page about this publisher:

T-K Graphics was a distributor/retailer of pro books, but it is more well-known for publishing fan-created chapbooks and other amateur zines.

It was based in Baltimore, Maryland was founded in the early 1970s, perhaps earlier.

Via jell-o biafra says, a great (but sadly dormant) Tumblr for all things pulp, pop and underground.

The Drama of Ray Bradbury by Ben P. Indick. T-K Graphics, 1977. [More info on ISFDB] The title uses outlined caps from ITC Souvenir, with a timid swash initial. The author’s name is in Peignot, the price info in Book Jacket.

Middle Earth: A World in Conflict by Stephen O. Miller, with illustrations by James Shull. T-K Graphics, 1975. [More info on ISFDB] ITC Ronda is used in lowercase letters from the Bold, with alternates for a e r. The other fonts are Eurostile Light Extended, Grotesque No. 9 Italic, Windsor, and ITC Bolt.

An Arthurian Concordance by Dennis Lerond, with illustrations snagged from Aubrey Beardsley. T-K Graphics, Baltimore, 1974. [More info on ISFDB] Libra is paired with wide caps from Folio. The author’s name is added in Univers Condensed, the price info appears to be in Venus Extended.

I designed the official poster, banner and calendar collaterals for the 2023 edition of the Maryland Film Festival at Parkway Theatre in Baltimore.

EcoBites is student project part of Maryland Institute College of Art, mentored by Jennifer Cole Phillips.

The project presents a collection of ten ecology-themed DIY experiments called Science Snacks from The Exploratorium, a public learning laboratory in San Francisco. This project aimed to package these hands-on experiments into pamphlets that are easy to carry. Printed on newsprint, they unfold into miniposters that can be savored as collectables.

Typeset in Cronos created by Robert Slimbach and Graphik by Christian Schwartz.

Future Islands released a new track called "Deep In The Night." The track's digital cover art was designed by Nolen Štrāls. The accompanying music video uses OH no Type Co.’s Regrets (Major style) for the titling, which was designed by Albert Birney, who also has direction and editing credits on the video.

Director of photography: Tyler Davis
Production manager: Carmen Negrelli
Gaffer: Alyson Chang
Audio playback: Matt Ricchini
Art direction for the photography by Frank Hamilton

Matt Porterfield is a writer, director, and creative producer hailing from Baltimore and currently based in Mexico City. Drexler, a digital creative studio from his hometown, designed Porterfield’s portfolio website, combining Helvetica for text with all-caps Megazoid for titles. They incorporated some hover effects that hide and reveal the circular counters in DJR’s celebration of “the awkwardness of raw geometry”.

From designer Jason Perrotti:

Exploring Vegan was founded on one principle: eating plant-based doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing affair. Author and founder Kylie Perrotti aims to create a brand that exudes joy, excitement, and exploration of new, tasty ways to incorporate meat-free meals into everyday life, whether it’s once a week or every meal.

It was of utmost importance for the brand to reflect the fun and playful nature of exploration. The logo features loops and curls that mimic plant growth and hint at the many different directions and paths that plant-based cooking can take. Extensive use of bright colors inspired by plants, fruits, and vegetables add a sense of vibrancy to the brand and are supported by sticker-like illustrations and carefully considered photo backdrops.

Headlines set in Agrandir emphasize the welcoming mindset of Exploring Vegan while also adding a bit of quirk. Body text is set in Aperçu.

For the web experience, a variety of animations and microinteractions keep the user engaged and create a joyful digital experience. Prominent discoverability elements allow the user to take their own journey through the world of plant-based recipes and product reviews.

Resist Nutrition is on a mission to bring hormone and metabolic health to the “bro-tein” aisle by resisting diet culture and creating science-backed functional food that every body can enjoy.

Brand strategy, visual identity, creative direction, packaging design by Here and Now Creative Co.

M PLUS in use for a composition inspired by “Always With Me,” an airy, melancholic song by Kimura Youmi from the Spirited Away soundtrack. The lyrics to the song are laid out in Katakana and come together to form abstract graphics.

Shatter with its splintered letterforms, chosen as a visual metaphor for mental disorder. The fragmentation is echoed in the illustration.

Retreat from Sanity: The Structure of Emerging Psychosis was written by Malcolm B. Bowers, Jr., M.D. (1933–2008). Bowers was a member of the Yale University School of Medicine faculty and became a Professor of Psychiatry in 1976. Published in hardback by Human Sciences Press, this is the paperback edition by Penguin.

The cover design is by Walter Brooks (1922–1987). Born in Glasgow, Brooks came to the United States as an infant, and later studied at Cooper Union. After serving in the army in World War II, he pursued a career as a commercial artist, initially working for King Features Syndicate and various book publishers, before deciding on a career as a freelance artist in the early 1960s. Brooks designed book covers, greeting cards, and a number of postage stamps (incl. the 8-cent San Juan, Puerto Rico; the 9-cent, 10-cent, and 11-cent stamps of the Americana issue; the 3-cent, 5-cent and 5.2-cent stamps of the Transportation issue; and the 13-cent Indian Head Penny). In addition, he helped write, edit and illustrate a series of art instruction books for M. Grumbacher Inc. From 1970 to 1972, he served as president of the Society of Illustrators.

Learning Lots podcast: cover photo.

Aurochs and Acumin font families are used in the branding/identity for the Learning Lots podcast with Brie Larson and Jessie Ennis. View the case study on Behance.

Learning Lots podcast: social media templates.

Learning Lots podcast: Available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Learning Lots podcast: social media graphics.

A bold weight of Fiedler Gothic, tightly spaced, in an ad for Colt 45 malt liquor published in Ebony magazine, October 1969.

The Department of Digital Remains is a fictional federal agency that keeps a tab on all your virtual actions which will determine your fate in the digital afterlife. This is my thesis project for the Maryland Institute College of Art.

In an age of immortal digital presences, this is a speculative look at what happens to our online selves after we die. This project uses design fiction to examine digital lives through the lens of digital death while trying to answer the question: If we have found ways to treat physical remains of the departed with dignity, why not digital remains?

To create a visual language of a future bureaucracy, the choice of typefaces were IBM Plex Sans and IBM Plex Mono. The variable fonts Bandeins Strange and Bandeins Sans were added to bring in to humanize and complement the automated feel of the IBM Plex family.

As part of the nod to the museum’s name, the identity includes illustrations in the style of stained-glass windows of Waters and some of his closer collaborators; Divine and Mary Vivian Pearce.

The Church of Trash is a branding project for an imaginary museum and exhibition celebrating John Waters’ work. The museum inhabits the Bell Foundry building in Baltimore, as the self-proclaimed pope of trash is a proud Baltimorean.

I decided to go with a somewhat unconventional typeface. After trying many display options, Juniper seemed to match how distinctive Waters’ work is. Since the logo has two C in it, I modified one of its tails to have an easter egg in the typography. As Juniper is so recognizable and has so many curves, I chose Museo Sans 500, a more traditional sans serif, to go with it.

The project was done at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) for a Graduate Branding course with the mentorship of Abbott Miller and Andrew Walters. See more images on my website.

Yeoboseyo Namaste was a project aimed at creating a discourse around the similarities between South Korean and Indian cultures. The bilingual posters highlight the visual parallels and showcase the beautiful details through bold colour & typography.

Zesstype’s Korean Black Han Sans is paired with Hitesh Malaviya’s Quantum Devanagari. “Jeju” additionally features Banco by Roger Excoffon.

Beach House, a dream pop duo from Baltimore, has been around releasing ethereal tunes since the early 2000s. The duo’s 2018 album 7 puts Centra No. 1 front and center, using it as the focal point in the website, printed ephemera, and merchandise. On the concert posters, Centra is paired with what looks like Times New Roman Extra Bold. The poster for the Oakland show adds another – yet unidentified – sans serif to the typeface palette.

See more images at Sharp Type News.

Hope you all enjoy this tape, had a great time making it. Peace and love — Kilamdapro

Sea weed in use for the mixtape of US producer KilaMDapro, released in July 2019.

Phase II was an exhibition curated by Jerome Harris and shown at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) from April 7–21, 2019. The motion graphics for announcing the exhibition online were designed by Will Kuria who currently is completing his BFA in graphic design at the MICA.

Kuria used Redaction, a recently released typeface family designed by Jeremy Mickel, with creative direction by Forest Young. Inspired by The Redaction, an art project by Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts, it comes in seven grades of degradation. The initial Redaction is not unlike Times or Century Schoolbook, but with deep cuts at the joins. Redaction 10 starts to exhibit jagged curves. By the time one reaches Redaction 100, the letterforms have deteriorated into a barely decipherable pile of coarse pixels. From the project website:

As files were faxed, photocopied, and otherwise reproduced, the letterforms became bitmapped, bloated, warped, and were sometimes reduced to near-illegible forms. This particular aspect of variable legibility inspired subsequent experiments for future iterations of the fonts.

The animation playfully mixes Redaction’s roman and italic styles, and switches back and forth between the smooth and the pixellated cuts. The question “Can you name five designers of color?” is overlaid with the names of designers whose work was represented in the show.

Learn more about Redaction and its intent in an interview with Young and Mickel conducted by Rob Giampietro, Director of Design at the MoMA. The Redaction fonts are free for personal use.

From Jerome Harris:

Phase II is an exhibition that showcases the work of contemporary designers of color who are currently active in the field. It isolates a sampling of practitioners working across a variety of industries and shares their work collectively in an effort to circumvent dilution due to a lack of diversity. According to the results of the 2016 design census taken by the AIGA and Google, 7% of designers were Hispanic, 8% were Asian, and 3% were African-American. With so few practicing designers of color in the field, what would design as a whole look like if these numbers matched or exceeded the national percentages for each of these racial groups?

Phase II acts as the contemporary companion exhibition to the historical As, Not For: Dethroning Our Absolutes. The title denotes this exhibition’s direct progression from the last, and borrows its name from one of the artist exhibited in the original show, with permission of course. The two shows both confront patrons with similar questions: Can you name five designers of color? How often are designers of color featured in publications and media outlets that you frequent? In addition, this exhibit acts as a point of entry or familiarity into the design profession for all designers of color through professionals who look like them.

Read more about As, Not For: Dethroning Our Absolutes in Madeleine Morley’s interview with Harris for AIGA Eye on Design. In his talk at Typographics 2019, Harris focused “on the formal hegemony of Modernist typographic tropes, and how this imbalance, in turn, determines the standard by which designers and non-designers alike judge ‘good’ or ‘bad’ work.”

This still shows Redaction 70 for the big type.

Redaction 50 Italic

Redaction 10 Italic

Apparel design for Carpet Company. The font in use is Orbit.

Masters project for the MFA in Graphic Design at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland.

Future Perfect Tense proposes interactions that attempt to inform and question attitudes and biases towards an artificially intelligent future. The rise of automation will force humanity to reconcile their anxieties around AI in their everyday lives. The Future Perfect Tense indicates that an action will have been completed, finished or perfected at some point in the future.

See more from this project at Behance.