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Press & Articles
Introducing Walker Expanded:
The Walker Art Center's New Graphic Identity
With final sketches of a new graphic identity in hand, the Walker Art Center’s design studio approached the Process Type Foundry to create a system of implementation for their elegant and flexible proposal. The outcome—a pictographic font—combines shapes and patterns to accompany phrases set in Matthew Carter’s Walker and Adrian Frutiger’s Avenir. The following interview discusses the approach to the new identity and the resulting font: Walker Expanded.
Introducing Walker Expanded, a new graphic identity that functions as a typeface but instead of bold and italic fonts is grouped into related words, or vocabularies, and repeating patterns; it sets lines of words and textures that, like a roll of tape, can be applied to virtually anything—from printed matter and Web sites to merchandise or even architecture.
The following conversation took place in June 2005 between Eric Olson—founder of Process Type Foundry in St. Paul, Minnesota, who was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to help realize its new graphic identity—and the Walker’s design director Andrew Blauvelt, senior designer Chad Kloepfer, and graphic designer Emmet Byrne.
Emmet Byrne: What prompted the decision to create a more distinguishable identity for the Walker Art Center?
Andrew Blauvelt: With the opening of our new expansion, the Walker had the opportunity to reinvent itself. It makes sense to develop a new identity system to help signal a new institution. The main question was: How can the Walker approach the idea of a graphic identity in a fresh way?
The Walker has always had a strong identity, even though it isn’t reducible to a traditional logo or other kind of mark. The Walker has a graphic presence and a certain design continuity that is understood and recognized by many different people other than designers. The fact that we have an in-house staff responsible for the look and feel of all communications means that we exercise control over the design and can avoid the legacy of the style manuals and guides that render an identity static and eventually stale.
EB: What criteria and goals did you set for the new identity?
AB: I wanted it to be visually distinct, conceptually and technologically unique, yet totally in the hands of the designer. It needed to have some very simple rules about application and work at a variety of scales: small enough for a business card, but large enough for a wall.
EB: What about the previous identity—the typeface called Walker that Matthew Carter designed? Did you want to preserve it? What did you want to do differently?
AB: People have a mythical idea about the Walker typeface—that it was used for everything the institution produces. This has never been the case. In fact, such a universal approach would run counter to the Walker sensibility. It was and is still used on many things that represent the very core of the Walker as an institution. The problem, which exists with any typeface, is that it has a particular visual quality that limits how it combines with other typefaces.
The previous identity, commissioned by then-design director Laurie Haycock Makela, was implemented in 1995. That was 10 years ago, and it seemed timely for us to create something new. But just as the architecture of our expansion does not ignore what already exists, a new identity must acknowledge what has come before. So we use the Walker font to create a word to identify the institution and other important entities such as the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and our Web site. These are deployed within the matrix of the new identity. They stand out and apart from all the other words in a deliberate way. In a sense, the Carter identity is embedded in the graphic DNA of the Walker. We also still use the Walker font in other places, such as the gallery titling and on our new light-box building sign.
The Walker typeface is bold, dynamic, and variable. I wanted to create something with similar qualities for the new identity, but distinct. It didn’t make sense to just make another typeface. It was more about developing a graphic identity. One of the things I like about the Walker typeface is that it takes the designer to realize it. It doesn’t really exist prior to the designer setting the text. The same is true for the new identity. It is created on the fly with a kit of parts.
EB: Eric, as a typographer you said that you considered the Walker typeface to be the bedrock of the Walker identity. How did you feel about creating the new identity, which incorporates that typeface?
Eric Olson: That’s a hard one for me to answer. Since I was a designer at the Walker, I was really excited to be a part of it. The Walker typeface is almost an institution in itself. I felt that the new identity would be a complement or support for that instead of something that was competing with or replacing it. The consensus among a lot of type designers is, “Oh, what a shame that they don’t use the Walker typeface as much as they should,” and even Carter has said that. I guess I don’t think about it like that. It is actually a testament to the face that it still looks great, and can still mesh with so many different things. It still works with the new building. It still looks contemporary. I think Carter knew he was making something site-specific, for the times, but something that might eventually have to change. The fact that it’s still being used today says a lot.
EB: Andrew, how did you conceive the new identity?
AB: The idea started very simply. I was thinking of something like the work of Daniel Buren, an artist who has used a consistent vertical striping as a kind of surrogate for the art object. Could a line be used to represent the Walker? What kind of line is it? What color? How wide? Does it repeat? Could it be as simple as a piece of tape? A line can be applied to virtually anything; even unbranded things like an ordinary table could take on new meaning. A line is the simplest dynamic of geometry. At the same time, I looked at the Walker typeface wherein a keystroke does not necessarily yield the expected character. What if a character could produce not a letter but an entire word? What role would fonts have in such a scheme? Could language overcome typography using its own system? We knew practically that it needed to be many things depending on the situation. Sometimes it would need to quietly behave. Sometimes it was alone and had to perform in a much more explicit and dramatic way. Could it be simple and complex? Could the system grow and change over time? Was there a specific gesture that could be recognizable even if some of the elements were variable (like words, colors, textures)?
Chad Kloepfer: We’ve found that when using the identity there are several factors that you have to pay attention to. First, what kind of piece is the identity being applied to—is it serving the Walker as a whole, or a specific program or event. The program or subject and the audience dictates which word groups to use and how dynamically the identity appears. Certain word groups are meant for internal usage, and others are intended for a more public audience.
AB: That’s right. Instead of the typical fonts, such as bold and italic, the fonts in Walker Expanded are structured around groups of words. They reflect language, not visual properties of the typeface. They operate like vocabularies and, like language, can be tailored to specific audiences depending on the context. One font called Peer to Peer incorporates the language of institutional bureaucracy—the names of departments, for instance—while another one titled Public Address translates some of this language in terms that are more accessible to the general public. For instance, one font represents “Film/Video” as a department: “screenings” is a type of event, “Regis Dialogues” is a specific gateway program unique to that department, and “movies” is more common parlance. All of these examples relate to one of the many artistic disciplines the Walker presents. The ability to embed the language of all the disciplines in the identity emphasized the unique character of the Walker as a place for all the arts. The vocabularies can grow and change over time. Their use is tied more to context than convention. We even have a font for the Shop, which has its own vocabulary.
CK: Indeed. Once you have your word group chosen, you simply hit a single key to generate an entire word. For example, the D key produces the word “design.” The E key gives you “exhibitions,” all in the proper size and typeface. Also built into the font are different patterns that can be typed out and set behind a row of words to help create a single contained graphic mark, the “tape,” which can be applied to almost anything.
EB: Describe the tape idea. How does it manifest itself on different pieces?
CK: The tape concept is both an application and a branding method. In application, this strip of words and patterns acts like a piece of tape, running edge to edge—branding anything it is applied to. This method can work at various scales, meaning that you can brand anything from a postcard to a building. The identity is always recognizable as a line, but the elements that comprise the line are variable. This flexibility allows for many different looks and feels that can be controlled and adapted by the designer to either stand out or blend in, depending on the usage. We literally produced the identity as an actual roll of adhesive, which is used by the Shop to brand merchandise.
CK: Eric, the initial designs we brought to you represented a rather complicated identity and structure. How did you go about making it into a typeface that would function properly and be user-friendly?
EO: At first I thought I would be able to make it into an OpenType font, where through a feature we would be able to substitute a piece that could be a different color because this was really the core of this idea—that you could create two parts that were different colors and then combine them. Initially, that’s how I proceeded. It turns out that you can’t do that. PostScript only allows you to work in a single color. You can’t work on the same thing and have different colors that then overlap. That’s the limitation of the technology. To get around that obstacle, I actually approached it in a very analog way. If you break it apart into two bits by using the space bar, change the colors, and then make it one again—by deleting the space—you are able to overlap the pieces and the data is such that it doesn’t matter if it is overlapping.
CK: Was that a difficult function to program? Getting rid of the space and having it come back in the same position?
EO: Yes, because arriving exactly at the same position is key to making the font work. In short, the overlapping pieces of the font work through negative kerning and are separated when the user hits the space bar. Naturally, deleting the space bar makes the pieces then overlap once again. In turn, some really huge kerning values like 2,000–4,000 units occur. Compare these with, say, 50 units—a typical amount a traditional typeface might employ for letters like the T and A combinations. In the end, careful measurement and careful checking of the measurements were more difficult than executing the idea itself.
CK: What issues for the end user, in this case the designer, did you take into account?
EO: I had a unique angle on that since I was a designer at the Walker. I remember that we had a chart that showed you how to use the Walker typeface. I have to admit that I didn’t use the chart when I was there, I just used whatever I could find, which probably wasn’t the best way to do it. So the goal was accessibility, simplicity: “performing arts”=letter P; “dance”=letter D. There’s this built-in logic to it that you can figure out in a few seconds, rather than groping in the dark.
CK: Did you find that this process was very different from designing a normal typeface?
EO: You know, it’s basically in reverse. Most of the aesthetic decisions were already made by you, but the engineering wasn’t thought of at all. When I design a typeface, I consider these at the same time—how it’s going to space, how it’s going to kern, what kind of body color it’s going to have. All of these decisions were already made, and I had to figure a way to engineer it, make it overlap. I have to admit, when we first met, I wasn’t sure it was going to work. [Laughs] There are people who have tried to make letters overlap. LettError made a little font with an application that does it, but we couldn’t do that because you were going to offset print it. It would have caused problems. It had to be one font. I started working on it, and I was determined to code it all, and sub it all in, but it completely didn’t work. This sounds kind of stereotypical, but I figured out how to do it while I was in the shower.
CK: How do you feel about the notion of a typeface as an identity? Do you consider it a typeface at all?
EO: No, I don’t think of it as a typeface, but as a utility. That’s cool because you probably don’t want to call it an identity, but you have to ’fess up because it is an identity. But it’s so flexible that I don’t have one logo in my mind. Instead, I get an impression, or an approach, or a general vibe. And with the Walker, that was always the idea, as with the Carter commission—the Walker can’t make a logo that is going to sum it all up. The Walker means different things to different people. The programming is so diverse—performing arts is very exuberant and elaborate, whereas some parts of modern art are not like that, which is why you did what you did.
EB: If the identity is indeed a utility, can different designers employ it in different ways?
CK: The identity is basically a kit of parts that each designer uses to construct the identity in different forms and locations. The kit limits what the user can make out of it, so there are always similarities from application to application. The identity is always a line that contains words and is applied across a surface. The elements that vary are the actual words, the scale, patterns, colors, and placement. The place where you get the most variation from designer to designer is on institutional materials, like ticket stock, gallery passes, and shopping bags, where the identity is the main focus of the piece. You see different colors and layouts resulting in variations of usage, but the identity is so distinctive that it is always recognizable as the Walker. Because of this, there is really no reason to have a standards manual, perhaps just an understanding of which words to use in what context.
EO: It’s really what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and it basically has to be that way because it truly is a system. There are two shapes, and they have to overlap. So the system is this idea of how the overlapping works. The rules are so strict that you can’t do much to tamper with it—though you could overlap the overlap, negative kern the negative kerning! You’d end up with some heavy faux-baroque feeling.
CK: So do you think the concept and the technology matched up well?
EO: I think it matched up very well, because sometimes the best way to stumble into a solution is to be naïve about it. Let me rephrase that: to be a little skeptical of the end result. I let it sit for a few days, thinking maybe I should give you a call, but then I made it work with the space bar and the negative kerning. I guess there might be other fonts like that, but I don’t know of any. If it was treated simply as a graphic element and existed as an EPS file, things wouldn’t line up. The results would vary, over time. It’s a good match because the identity materials are designed by so many different people; it sets up a system.
EB: Do you know of any other identities that use a utility instead of a standards manual?
EO: A system of pieces, and it all relates? No. You have to look at it from the other side. How many institutions are that flexible?
EB: How flexible are the different word groupings? Can you see the vocabularies growing and changing over time?
AB: Definitely. Some I think are pretty complete. There are other possibilities; for example, the use of adjectives to characterize the Walker and its programs. It is quite possible to take data from actual surveys and use it to create such a vocabulary. In a way, this new identity becomes its own little record of institutional change over time.
CK: The identity is still so new and fresh in my mind that it is hard to see it from a different perspective. The thing that surprises me about it is how versatile it really is. The variety of different materials and surfaces we have applied it to, and its ease of use in application was not something I could judge beforehand, and I was pleasantly surprised. I am excited to see what is done with it in the future—what different people, who aren’t as close to the conception and construction of it, will do with it.
The design and editorial studio at the Walker Art Center is responsible for all of the institution’s graphic communications. The studio has been the recipient of more than 80 design awards and has been nominated for the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation. Its work has been published and exhibited in the United States and abroad.
Andrew Blauvelt has been design director at the Walker since 1998, where he provides creative leadership on design-related projects and programs. Prior to joining the Walker, he taught graphic design in the graduate programs of North Carolina State University, Cranbrook Academy of Art, and the Jan van Eyck Akademie, the Netherlands.
Chad Kloepfer has been senior graphic designer at the Walker since 2002. He is a graduate of MCAD and worked previously at Wired magazine in San Francisco.
Emmet Byrne served as a design fellow at the Walker from 2003–2004. He has taught graphic design at MCAD and recently rejoined the Walker as a graphic designer. He is a graduate of North Carolina State University’s College of Design.
Editors: Kathleen McLean, Pamela Johnson
Interior Walker garage photograph: Cameron Wittig
Interview ©2005 Walker Art Center
Reprinted with permission.
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