Design Vigilantism
October 2009
As part of a project in Jason Santa Maria’s Communicating Design course, we were assigned to emulate Cardon Webb’s technique of removing street fliers and replacing them with interpreted redesigns.
I chose to replace a notice found in the lobby of my own apartment building, urging tenants to keep the hallways clear and to prevent fire hazards.
I redesigned the notice by taking inspiration from the building itself: taller than it is wide, a strong brick façade, and steel fire escapes bolted to narrow windows. The choice of H. Berthold AG’s Akzidenz-Grotesk was made based on typefaces that would have existed when the apartment was built in 1927.
Akzidenz has a history dating back to the 1900s, shortly before the apartment building was constructed. And like my apartment, Akzidenz has received many additions and alterations in its long history. Specific variants that I used emulate the tall & narrow shapes I found in the building’s windows, as well as providing a strong foundation to the flyer’s appearance.
Yellow is used throughout to not only help identify the document as a warning, but to break up the mass of black text with some amount of ornamentation.
