Art Bash

My initial concept was inspired by flyposting—the pasted, torn, and distressed layers of posters found on city streets and outside music venues. I was drawn to the visual noise created by overlapping rips, crinkles, and paper fragments, which felt like a natural expression of grunge and rock.

Drawing from vintage rock and roll graphic design, bold sans-serif typography was used to cut through visual distress and communicate event details in concert language such as “one nite only.” I printed typographic compositions on letter-size paper before experimenting with water, glue, ripping, plastering, layering, and reassembling the sheets. The goal was to find a balance between physical distortion and legibility, while exploring different ways to manipulate individual letterforms.

Once dried, the typography was scanned and brought back into the digital environment, creating a tactile, photographic quality while retaining control over the final compositions.

During the concept development phase, I also experimented with printing directly onto coloured craft paper. This referenced the inexpensive, textured stocks historically used to promote underground concerts while introducing colour into an otherwise stark black-and-white system. Combining the ripped craft paper with distressed typography created an additional layer of texture that could flex around event copy across applications such as webpages, menus, and signage.

Through collaboration with the AGO, the paper elements evolved into an electric pink, giving the identity a more irreverent, punk-inspired character. Once finalized, the system was extended across digital and physical applications, including web banners, social media, blog graphics, posters, menus, and signage.

Repetition became a key compositional device, drawing from the appearance of walls covered in layers of flyposted posters. This approach translated particularly well to motion, allowing individual elements to build into dense, energetic compositions. Supporting copy was set in Switzer to provide a cleaner counterpoint to the distressed display typography. Small typographic irregularities—including intentionally varied tracking and slightly rotated paragraphs—introduced a typewriter-like sense of imperfection while maintaining readability.

The final identity extended beyond promotional materials and into the event itself, appearing as projected graphics throughout Walker Court as well as in directional signage and printed materials throughout the gallery.