In this semester-long project, I was charged with the design of a retrospective exhibition of the photographs of Dorothea Lange, and of associated printed collateral – a poster, an invitation card, and an exhibition catalogue.

All of these elements needed to be graphically related to represent the identity of the exhibition, but differentiated enough to function as individual pieces of design. I chose an understated visual vocabulary that defers to Lange's striking silvery images but maintains its authority with elegantly ordered typography.

The exhibit and its companion catalogue maintain this simple hierarchy throughout; the poster and invitation card, designed to attract interest in the show rather than showcase its contents, incorporate more expressive elements.

Some books I've designed, either as freelance projects or school exercises. Among them, the jacket for a collection of essays by the late Rutgers historian Warren I. Susman (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003), a treasury of a century's worth of postcards depicting the Italian hill-town of Assisi (Editrice Minerva, 2005), a handbook for RISD (2005), and a 64-page promotional brochure, with 12-page supplement, for a Washington church (2003).

I enjoy the expressive limitations of book design – unlike designing a poster or a CD, for example, there's little room for a bold, splashy graphic statement: so the focus is on the minutiae, attention to subtle typographic detail.

A few posters from the past year – principally school exercises – on diverse subjects including alcoholism awareness, a series of exhibitions at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the film Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966), a student art exhibition in Italy, and so forth.

Information design – the visual display, ordering, and distillation of complex ideas or processes – may well be one of the nobler applications of graphic design. The discipline runs the gamut from bar graphs to airline safety cards; from subway maps to visualisations of complex logical structures – and beyond. Of chief importance are logic, graphic clarity, and nuanced typography.

In fall 2004, I took a class on information design with Dynamic Diagrams co-founder Krzysztof Lenk. Shown is a representative project, a diagram that attempts to graphically display the complex personal, familial, and political relationships of Shakespeare's play Richard III.

a sampling of sketches from a year of study in Rome, Italy. Among the subjects in this selection are the Palatine Hill, aquaducts near Cinecittà, the Ponte Rotto ('broken bridge') in central Rome, the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli outside of Assisi, and Rome's fascist-era Eur (Esposizione Universale Romana) quarter.

and a few photos of similar provenance.

© 2005 Christian Mueller · christian.t.mueller@gmail.com
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