Life on Mars: 55th Carnegie International
visual identity
concept development, art direction, type design, way finding
The 2008 Carnegie International examines what it means to be human in today’s world. Forty artists from 17 countries explore the alien inside each of us. For the Life on Mars exhibition, the museum hired us to create a visual identity, to design and produce the exhibition catalogue, to develop an exhibition wayfinding system, and to create and art direct a print and online ad campaign.
design We reinforced the theme of humanity with a catalogue design that itself has a strong sense of humanity. A specially created hand-drawn font, ballpoint blue for all texts, picket signs that look ready for use, a scribble pattern on the cover and pages between sections all emphasize the human hand.
client Carnegie Museum of Art is arguably the first museum of contemporary art in the United States, collecting what it calls the “Old Masters of Tomorrow” since the inception of the Carnegie International in 1896. Today, the museum has a collection of over 30,000 objects from the whole field of visual arts.
collaborators
Douglas Fogle, curator and editor
Ed Panar, photography
Arlene Sanderson, project manager
collections
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Art Institute of Chicago
