Place as Process

2022

Preserving voices of the past through type design

This thesis project uses variable font design to capture the typographic spirit of Black Mountain. My font, BMC45, pays homage to the school’s extraordinary 1945 summer session which was a pivotal moment for the field of graphic design within the community. In this project, I used typography to preserve and share this story, giving today’s designers a way to interact with Black Mountain in their own practices.

Special thanks to Heather South (Lead Archivist, Western Regional Archives, Asheville, NC) for research assistance; Sean Adams, Gloria Kondrup, Cheri Gray, and Samantha Fleming for thesis advising; and Philip Blocklyn for Print shop expertise

Griffith Observatory's original ironwork doors which feature seven different astronomical instruments.

I translated these symbols into contemporary marks that are used throughout the brand.

These symbols are used individually as a graphic language, or together as a unique brand pattern.

Place as Process

Timeline of Black Mountain College showing all the years it was open and when the most influential people were there.

Archival printed texts from the BMC Print Shop used as the reference for the fonts I designed

Archival printed texts from the BMC Print Shop used as the reference for the fonts I designed

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About the project

I began my thesis research by compiling a timeline of Black Mountain College, mapping key players and their time at the school. This helped me understand the life of the college and how each person influenced others. After compiling this timeline, I noticed a sparse block of time in the middle of the school’s lifespan. I discovered this block of time fit during the dates of WWII. Through creating this timeline, I began to see how current events affected the life of the community. This timeline was compiled from research by Mary Emma Harris (The Arts at Black Mountain, 1987).

A chart of the four primary static fonts of BMC45: sans serif regular to black and serif regular to black.

A chart of the interpolated fonts of BMC45: sans serif regular to black and serif regular to black.

An archival piece from the BMC Print Shop with BMC45 overlayed on top of it showing how the fonts from the print shop translated into BMC45.

The solution

Planning BMC45’s variability axes was a uniquely difficult task. I considered many different forms of variability like contrast or width. In the end, I chose weight and serifs because it gave me more opportunity to capture the breadth of Black Mountain College’s typographic voice.

Detail image of one of the posters I designed to showcase this font. It features a black and white photo from the college and a quote that says "We do everything ourselves."

I wanted to create a way for today’s designers to interact with this extraordinary story of Black Mountain College, so I decided to design a font capturing the typographic spirit of the community. I developed a variable font with four static fonts and two variable axes of weight and retracting serifs. My font, BMC45 pays respect to the school’s 1945 Summer Session which was a pivotal moment for the field of graphic design within the community.

Each of the four static masters of the font were developed from archival materials from Black Mountain College. Images courtesy of the Western Regional Archives.

Place as Process

Place as Process

Place as Process

Results

As a part of my thesis at ArtCenter College of Design, I wrote and designed the Place as Process book. Taking on the theme of a sense of place, I drew inspiration from atlases, creating layouts which organize information and signaling to the reader their location in the book. The book features key research from interviews, compiled notes from archival materials, and articles published for the Black Mountain College Journal. You can read the full book here.

Table of Contents from the process book which has four sections: praxis, place as process, pedagogy, and research.

A sample spread from the process book which shows an article written by Josef Albers titled "On Teaching Art to Youngsters"

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