Framing Fraktur

Judith Tannenbaum asked me to design an identity for the upcoming exhibit “Framing Fraktur” at The Free Library of Philadelphia. She curated the show wherein they are showing historical Pennsylvanian Fraktur documents alongside the work of 7 contemporary artists (myself included) whose work has some relationship to the historical pieces.

I looked at a wealth of these documents online and noticed several repeating motifs: birds and tulips among them. I also noted how sometimes the lettering was broken into bands of different colours. So I created a contemporary version of this, with a set stylized ornaments that can be used in different ways with or without the logo.

I used Henrik Kubel’s typeface Klampenbourg, because it looked good.

I handed the elements and guidelines over to the Library for their in-house team to use in the execution of all the materials. They did a mighty fine job. Below are banners outside the Library for the show.

Below is one of the banners on the interior, as well as the backside of the banner, showing just one of the ornaments.

2014